Celia Garth: A Novel

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Celia Garth: A Novel Page 6

by Gwen Bristow


  “Your son—is he planning to stay at home now?”

  Vivian looked up. There was a bitter little smile on her lips. “Luke? No, he’ll start back,” she replied tersely, “as soon as he can load his wagons.”

  She shrugged, and twirled her lorgnette again. She was not going to shed any tears—Celia wondered if she ever did—but it was plain that Luke Ansell was going to take another bloodcurdling journey in spite of all his mother could do to stop him. Celia could almost hear the clash of battle.

  Jimmy had said Vivian always got her own way. But it seemed Jimmy was wrong. Evidently there was one person who could talk back to her. Celia thought Luke ought to stay home a while for his mother’s sake, and she would have liked to tell him so; but she could not help feeling some respect for the fellow all the same.

  Marietta stepped out from the shadow where she had been waiting.

  “Miss Vivian, the sand has run out.”

  “Thank you,” said Vivian. During the moment of silence she had recovered her poise, and when she spoke to Celia her voice was cool and clear again. “Then this is all, Miss Garth. I’m having some guests this evening and it’s time I went to the parlor.”

  Celia stood up and curtsied. “Good night, Mrs. Lacy. I’ll do my best.”

  “Please do,” Vivian said crisply, but she added with a note of approval, “You have a good start. You like your work.” She smiled a little. “Keep your weight down and your chin up—you’ll get along. Good night.”

  CHAPTER 5

  MARIETTA LET CELIA OUT by a side door into the garden. The dark was gathering, cool and full of fragrance. Celia went along a brick walk through the flowerbeds, and pushing open the gate she stepped out on the sidewalk.

  A block away the beacon shone in the spire of St. Michael’s, and along both sides of the street the colored house-boys were lighting the lanterns over the front doors. In the better parts of town every house had its own light, and these streets were as safe by night as by day. Celia was used to doing her errands without being bothered, so now she was astonished to hear a man’s voice exclaim,

  “Good evening! I’m just in time to see you home.”

  With a start she looked around. In the glow of the nearest lantern she saw a big fellow who looked vaguely familiar. He was wearing a wine-colored coat, and he had pulled off his hat, showing his brown hair brushed back in thick ripples and tied behind. As he was facing the lantern she could see that he had a ruddy sunburnt face and bright blue eyes, the brightest and bluest she thought she had ever seen. With those brown cheeks and jewel-blue eyes, and his look of vigor and gay humor, without being handsome he was certainly attractive. And mighty sure of himself, thought Celia, who was not just now in a mood to flirt.

  She replied coolly, “No, thank you. I know my way.”

  “Please don’t be like that!” begged the fashionable stranger. He spoke with a boyish urgency. “You’ve no idea how your hair shines with that lantern behind you—it’s a real moonlight gold. Even prettier than by daylight. Though it was mighty pretty when I saw you before, couple of hours back—remember?”

  As he spoke she did remember—the brown young man who had doffed his hat to her when she was on her way here this afternoon. She had enjoyed his attention then, but now she thought of how Mrs. Lacy might react if somebody reported that her new dressmaker was hardly out of the house before she let herself be picked up by a strange man.

  He was saying, “I saw you coming across the garden, so I waited for you; How do you happen to be here?”

  “I was asked to call,” Celia returned stiffly, “to discuss some dressmaking. And I don’t—”

  “Oh, then you must be Celia Garth.”

  Celia finished her sentence. “—and I don’t walk on the street with just anybody!”

  “But I’m not just anybody!” protested the unblushing cavalier. “I’m me. Me. Luke Ansell.”

  “Luke—?” Celia repeated. She was taken aback, and she had forgotten the surname of Vivian’s hot-headed son. He took quick advantage of her hesitation.

  “Ansell,” he repeated firmly. He began to spell, counting off the letters on his fingers. “Not just anybody, Ansell. A for anybody, N for nobody, S for somebody, E for everybody, two L’s for—” This time he was the one who hesitated.

  Celia was laughing. “Yes?” she teased him. “Two L’s for what?”

  “Two L’s for—” he pointed his finger at her and ended triumphantly—“for like-a-body, twice! I’ve seen you twice, I’ve liked you both times. So now won’t you like me and let me walk with you to Mrs. Thorley’s?”

  He waited with enticing eagerness. A young man, with a look of rugged strength, evidently he was a son of one of Vivian’s more recent marriages. “All right,” agreed Celia.

  “Good!” Luke exclaimed, and they fell into step. As they walked along he said, “Are you going to sew for my mother?”

  “Yes—I mean, she’s going to let me try.”

  Luke chuckled softly. “Scared of her?”

  “Yes!” Celia said, and felt better for saying it.

  They were passing a house which had its driveway gate deeply recessed into the garden wall. Over the gate was a lantern. “Let’s stop here,” Luke suggested. “Maybe I can find a good sign for you.”

  While she watched him, puzzled, he drew a small thick book from his coat pocket. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “A Bible,” said Luke, and began to turn the pages, evidently looking for some passage he had in mind. Celia was surprised. From what she had heard of the swashbucklers of the wagon track, a Bible seemed an unlikely piece of equipment. Luke was saying, “Fine print, but I’ve got good eyes and when you drive supply wagons you don’t have much room for your own gear. What’s your birthday?”

  Still puzzled, she told him, “I was born the thirteenth of April, 1759.”

  “I didn’t ask the year. I can see it wasn’t very long ago.” Luke was running his finger down the page. “Ah, here it is.” By the light of the lantern above him he read, “‘She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.’” He looked up, and his blue eyes flashed on her through the dark. “There. That’s your Bible verse. Sounds as if the Lord meant you to be a dressmaker.”

  “Where is that?” Celia asked eagerly. “And why is it mine?” Maybe it was the verse, or Luke’s debonair ways, but she felt a springing confidence replacing the tremors of her day.

  “It’s the thirteenth verse of the last chapter of Proverbs,” said Luke. “This chapter describes a woman. There are thirty-one verses, one for each day of the month, and the verse numbered to match your birthday is yours.”

  “Oh, I like that! Is there a man’s chapter too?”

  “Yes, the twenty-first chapter is for men. And my verse—” Turning back a few leaves he read it to her. “‘Who so keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his soul from troubles.’”

  The idea of Luke’s being warned to keep his mouth shut struck Celia as so impossible that she could not help laughing. He asked,

  “You think I don’t pay enough attention to my verse?”

  “Well—you don’t seem like the quiet type.”

  Luke shook his head mournfully. “My mother says I talk too much. But on the wagon track I have to be so inhumanly silent, it’s a relief to gabble when I’m at home.” He put the book back into his pocket and they started walking again.

  “It’s very dangerous on the track, isn’t it?” Celia asked.

  “Why yes, it is,” said Luke. He spoke in a matter-of-fact way.

  But she wanted to know more, so he explained. For many years there had been a regular trade between Charleston and Philadelphia. The trading road went from Charleston to Camden, across the North Carolina line and through the towns of Charlotte and Salisbury, then across Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, and into Pennsylvania. Today of course, though you followed the same route in general, you did not dare keep to the regular track. You never went the same way twice.


  But any way you went, it was risky. The British attacked every wagon train they could catch up with. And besides the British, there were thieves in the woods looking for a chance to shoot the drivers, for the loads could be sold at enormous prices. But when Celia exclaimed at his courage, Luke shook his head.

  “It just happens to be the sort of thing I can do,” he told her.

  They had reached the shop. Luke walked with her up the steps and into the parlor. The customers had gone and Agnes was about to lock up. Celia knew from experience that Agnes was dismayed at seeing a visitor walk in so late, but Agnes came forward, smiling with longsuffering sweetness, and asked the gentleman how she could serve him.

  Luke bowed. He said he was not a customer, he had merely been seeing Miss Garth back from her interview with his mother. But now that he was here, he was glad he had come in. He flirted with Agnes and flattered her, and asked if she worked here every day.

  Agnes was charmed. Celia, lingering in the background, thought she had never seen a skirt-chaser more expert. Remembering how adroitly he had won her favor a few minutes ago, she decided he was a man to beware of. Probably had a girl in every town between here and Philadelphia. And him toting a Bible, too.

  The parlor was well lighted, and now she observed that with his wine-colored coat Luke wore blue knee-breeches and heavy gray stockings. She was surprised at the stockings. They were knitted of thick yarn such as a laboring man would wear, but the knitter had made them in an elaborate lacework pattern like the stockings of a gentleman dandy. Celia thought such a fancy design on such coarse stockings was silly. She wondered if Vivian had made them, and doubted it. She could not imagine Vivian’s wasting her time like that.

  Luke was asking Agnes how she kept herself so fresh and pretty after a day’s work. She didn’t look a bit tired, he said, but she must be. It was time she got some rest. He would like to take a look at the fashion dolls—that man-doll in the purple coat had given him an idea—but he did not want to detain her. Maybe Miss Garth would be willing to lock up after him.

  As Celia was willing, and as Agnes really was tired (and looked it, in spite of Luke’s honeyed fibs), he got his way and she went upstairs in a happy frame of mind.

  Celia was sitting on the arm of a chair near the doll cabinet. Luke crossed the room and rested one hand on the cabinet, but he spoke to her without glancing at the dolls. “When I leave Charleston again, my mother and stepfather will go back to Sea Garden. Would you go along, and make her another dress or two?”

  “I’d love to!” exclaimed Celia. “If—” She bit her lip.

  “If what?” he asked smiling.

  “Why, if your mother wants me—and if Mrs. Thorley will let me.

  “Oh,” Luke said. “If mother wants you she’ll arrange it with Mrs. Thorley. As for whether or not she’ll want you—” He grinned down at her. “I rather think she’s going to like you. She was quite doubtful before you came over. Jimmy Rand made an eloquent speech, that’s the only reason she said she’d see you at all. If she took you she must have been agreeably surprised.”

  Celia thought with a glow of triumph, This will show Mrs. Thorley! But at the same time she remembered Vivian’s troubled hands twisting the lorgnette. With a sharp glance at Luke she suggested, “You think your mother will worry less about you if she has clothes to keep her busy?”

  “I think,” Luke answered calmly, “that it’s none of your business, but since you ask me, yes.”

  “Why don’t you stay home this winter?” Celia asked.

  Luke smiled at one side of his mouth. “I’m no parlor patriot,” he said shortly.

  “I suppose you’d call Jimmy Rand a parlor patriot!”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Luke. “Somebody has to guard Charleston harbor or I’d have no guns to load on my wagons. Remember what King David said about the men who stayed by the stuff?”

  Celia shook her head.

  “You’ll find it in the Bible. He said the men who stand on guard are just as important as the men who go into battle.”

  She smiled, unwillingly. “You know a lot of smart answers out of the Bible.”

  “Lot of smart answers there,” said Luke. He stuck his thumbs under his belt. “Now you stop bothering about my mother and me. You stick to your knitting.”

  The word “knitting” brought Celia’s mind back to his stockings. There was a moment of silence. A chair stood by the wall, a dainty little chair without arms. Luke pulled it forward and perched on it like a large bird on a small twig, his heels hooked over the front rung, his elbows on his knees and his hands linked. “What are you staring at?” he asked.

  “I didn’t realize I was staring,” she said with a touch of embarrassment. But since she did want to know, she took this chance to find out. “Mr. Ansell, who made your stockings?”

  Luke went rigid as though with shock. His jaw dropped, his eyes were like two blue fires in his weatherbeaten face. For an instant he looked at her in amazement.

  But only for an instant. Luke was used to shocks. He got himself in hand so fast that Celia almost thought she had made a mistake about his reaction. He relaxed, grinned, held out one leg and examined it. Finally, tucking his leg under the chair again, he hooked his heel over the rung as before. He replied serenely, “I did.”

  This time she was the startled one. “You!”

  Luke nodded. “On the wagon track.” Laughing at her surprise, he went on. “I’m no hero. As long as we’re moving, the job isn’t too fearsome. We’re so busy with the teams we don’t have time to think about how dangerous it is. But when we stop to rest—when the woods crunch, and every crunch may be redcoats or a gang of murdering robbers—then, dear lady, I’m scared. So I knit. With fancy patterns like this I have to count stitches. Eases my nerves.”

  For a moment Celia said nothing. She still could not guess why he had been so jolted at her query, but she was beginning to know something else about him. She looked him over—his thick rippling hair and his sunburn, his aggressive blue eyes, his whole air of strength and defiance and daredevil stubbornness. In a wondering voice she said, “Mr. Ansell, you—”

  She stopped, hardly knowing how to say it. With a puzzled interest he prompted her. “Yes? Go on.”

  Celia said, “You like that, don’t you?”

  “Like what?” he asked mischievously. “Knitting?”

  “You know what I mean,” Celia retorted. “You like being scared.”

  Luke began to laugh, softly and almost proudly, as if he enjoyed her keenness. “Not exactly,” he said, “but you understand it better than most people. What I like is the way I feel when I wake up in the morning, when I look around and say, ‘Good Lord, I’m still here!’”

  Celia nodded slowly. Luke got to his feet.

  “Now,” he said, “I’ll ask you something.”

  She laughed a little. “All right.”

  “Do you always notice so much about other people?”

  “Why yes,” Celia said thoughtfully, “I think I do. I like to know about people.”

  “You’re as sharp as my mother,” Luke said. With a smile that was half amused and half admiring, he went to the door. Hand on the doorknob he gave her a parting glance, his eyes going up and down in a way that made her pleasantly conscious of her blond hair and brown eyes and slim waistline. “I’ve enjoyed meeting you,” said Luke. “Good night.” Turning, he grinned at her over his shoulder. “Good night,” he repeated. “Sassyface.”

  The door banged and he was gone. But he had slammed it so hard that the latch had not caught and the door was swinging open again. She went to fasten it.

  By the lantern over the doorway she could see him striding off into the dark. He was singing.

  “Now girls, why act so shy

  When provoking men come by?

  You know you’re only wondering

  how you strike us—”

  Celia stopped and listened. Luke’s voice was dwindling, but the wind was blowing her way an
d it brought his song back to where she stood.

  “Oh forget the won’ts and can’ts!

  For since half the world wears pants,

  You might as well own up to it—

  you like us!”

  CHAPTER 6

  THE SAME WEEK THAT Celia began to work for Vivian, Roy was married to Sophie Torrance in the church of St. James Goose Creek, seventeen miles above Charleston. Vivian serenely stayed home, but her son Burton Dale and his wife attended, and. so did Jimmy’s mother. Jimmy told Celia they said the bride and groom and Aunt Louisa had all seemed healthy and happy, but Uncle William had looked wretchedly unwell. Celia was sorry about Uncle William. She had always been fond of him, though she had not respected him much. She could not respect people who never got their own way.

  Jimmy said the Torrances were indigo planters, and Tories. Most of the indigo people were Tories. Some years ago the gentlemen in Parliament, wanting British sources of indigo that would compete with the crops raised by Frenchmen in the French West Indies, had voted to pay a bonus on every pound of indigo raised in the king’s colonies. If the Americans should cut their ties with the king, of course his government would no longer pay them to raise indigo; therefore, Jimmy said to Celia, Mrs. Roy Garth would no doubt wear a green ribbon on her cap.

  And from what Celia had said about Roy, Jimmy added with a wise twinkle, he wouldn’t be surprised if Roy turned Tory also.

  He told Celia all this one evening when he walked with her back to the shop, and lingered in the little sitting room where the girls received callers. Celia agreed, laughing. For while Roy had never put himself to any trouble about the war, before she left home he had favored independence. Most of the rice planters favored independence because they were tired of British restrictions on the sale of their crop.

  But though she was interested, after Jimmy had gone she hardly thought of Roy again. She did not have room in her head for anything but her work. Vivian was proving just as impossible a customer as they had warned her.

 

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