by Gwen Bristow
Celia looked around again. She saw Herbert Lacy, in a pink coat and white wig, chatting with Dan Pomeroy. Vivian was moving about with the poise of the perfect hostess, deft, gracious, beautiful. She was superbly dressed in white satin with an over-skirt of black lace. Her hair was a white tower, her jewelry silver with amethysts. Every man she passed, from ancient Simon Dale leaning on his gold-topped cane, to eighteen-year-old Paul de Courcey strutting in his brand new rebel uniform, paused as she went by and inclined his head in instinctive tribute. Vivian accepted their homage with the ease of long custom. She had been fascinating men for fifty years, and it was no surprise to her that she was doing it still.
It seemed to Celia that everything had been perfect, from the very beginning of the ball when she and Jimmy had stepped forth to lead the minuet. She had been a miracle of grace—those were Jimmy’s words, but even Vivian said she had done well. When Celia exclaimed, “Oh thank you, Mrs. Lacy!”—Vivian laughed and said, “I think now you may call me Vivian.”
Celia liked this. Not only because it meant she had won Vivian’s approval, but because it marked the change in her own status. She wondered if Jimmy would ever know how much he was giving her. These people—how different their attitude was now, from what it had been in her pre-Jimmy days!
Not all the guests had met her before, but a sizable number of them had come to the shop while she worked there. Celia observed these with amusement. When Vivian made the introductions, some of them greeted her as if they had never seen her until now, evidently thinking it tactful to ignore the fact that she had been a sewing-girl. But others were like Mrs. Baxter, who gushed, “Oh yes, I know Miss Garth, we are quite old friends.” Or like Rena Fairbanks, who had been to school with Celia but had not called attention to it until tonight when she exclaimed, “We must get together soon and have a good long talk about the old days!” Celia smiled with cool politeness. It was fun to do a little snubbing herself.
But in general, they had been charming. She was the guest of honor and they treated her like it. She had danced and danced, and still had a list of gentlemen waiting their turns. She had even danced with Burton Dale, and though he had huffed and puffed through the measures he had danced with skill. But Burton’s half-brother Godfrey Bernard, he was lean and light on his feet as a boy, and he had a suave elegance of manner that no boy could match.
Darren was not here. When she asked about him, Godfrey said he had sent Darren on a business trip. They had expected him back in time for the ball; probably the weather had delayed him. Celia was disappointed, but not too much. There were plenty of other men.
The next dance had been timed to end just before midnight. As it ended, the waiters would pass glasses of wine, and open the door to the hall so they could all hear the great clock strike twelve. Then when they had drunk to a happy New Year, Herbert and Vivian, followed by Jimmy and herself, would lead the way into the dining-room for supper.
And what a supper!—crab soup and scalloped oysters, wild duck cooked in wine, baked whiting with shrimp sauce, smoked ham, veal in coin-thin slices covered with cream; jellies and tarts and cream-puffs, and Madeira wine that had been aging for years in the cypress attic.
And after supper, more dancing. Celia set her glass on the table and exchanged another rapturous smile with Jimmy. The older folks might prefer to sit by the wall after supper and look on, but she and Jimmy were not tired. They felt like dancing till dawn.
It was time to primp for that next dance. As she crossed the hall toward the dressing room she could hear the clock, ponderously ticking toward midnight.
When Marietta had smoothed her hair and patted her temples with rosewater, Celia came back to the ballroom. She and Jimmy took their places. As they danced Celia looked around at the brilliant costumes and flashing jewels, and thought of a flower garden sparkling after a shower.
The dance ended, and the waiters began to pass the wine. The men of the family moved to stand in a group before the door to the hall—Herbert and his son Eugene, and Vivian’s sons Burton and Godfrey. When she had beckoned Celia and Jimmy to the front so they would stand facing Herbert, Vivian took her place beside him.
One of the waiters placed a footstool in front of the doorway. Herbert stepped on the stool so they could all see him, and held up his glass. With his glistening white wig, his pink coat and lace ruffles, his face flushed with pleasure—for Herbert enjoyed a party as long as he had nothing to do but enjoy it—he looked gay and cordial, a man who had liked every one of his seventy years. The guests fell silent as he began to speak.
“Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes the year 1780 will begin. As you know, we are here to congratulate our fortunate friend Captain Rand on his engagement to Miss Celia Garth. So as our last act of the old year, let us drink to their happiness!”
As all the glasses were raised together it was like the sparkling of a thousand stars. There was a medley of words and laughter. Celia felt Jimmy’s hand give her elbow a squeeze.
The waiters were refilling the glasses. Herbert raised his hand again to ask for silence.
“The clock is about to strike,” he said. “Listen!”
They listened. Then it came, the deep solemn sound of the clock. Bong, bong—Celia felt her heart bounce like a ship in the wind. It was so beautiful, so thrilling—she looked at Jimmy. Soundlessly, his lips moved to say to her, “Happy New Year!”
—Bong, said the clock. Bong—
There was a noise outside. It was a noise made of many noises—horses’ hoofs squelching in the mud, men shouting orders, a pounding on the front door and the sound of the door bursting open. In the hall, servants cried out in alarm and a dish dropped and broke on the floor. In the ballroom the whole company, as if pushed from behind, took a step toward the doorway. The room was suddenly full of voices as everybody asked everybody else what was going on.
Jimmy was holding Celia to him with an arm around her waist. A man strode into the ballroom, a burly creature who smelt like a wet dog. He had on a leather jacket and breeches, heavy riding-boots and a wide hat, and his face was covered with whiskers. His clothes were mud-spattered, dripping on the polished floor; trickles ran off his sodden hat to his shoulders. The hat-brim was so limp that it hung forward and hid most of his face above the beard.
Just over the threshold he stopped. With a look of bewilderment he stared at the brilliant throng. A hundred shrill questions came at him, but he answered nothing because in that moment of shock he seemed to hear nothing. Three or four other bedraggled men came behind him, and like him they stopped as if blinded by the glitter within. And then—it was only an instant but it had seemed like a long time—they heard a cry from Vivian, a cry like music and laughter as she sprang forward.
“Luke!”
He turned and saw her, and swept her into his arms. They hugged each other, neither of them concerned that his miry clothes were wrecking her lace and satin, and the ardor of his embrace was sending her hair-powder up in a cloud that settled on his whiskers and made him look as if he had fallen into the flour barrel.
By this time a dozen mud-dripping men had come in. The guests were surging around them, and now there were more exclamations as this one and that recognized friends under the beards. Celia saw Herbert and Eugene Lacy grab the elbows of one fellow, and at the same time Jimmy cried, “Why there’s Tom Lacy,” and he let go of her as he hurried forward. Celia stood still, uncertain what to do now.
She was almost within touching distance of Luke and Vivian. “You crazy fool,” Vivian was saying to him, “what have you been—”
Looking around at the dazzling room, Luke did not seem to hear her. “Mother, what is all this?” he asked. He spoke as if he had come upon some orgy in a strange land.
“A ball, silly—New Year’s Eve!”
“Oh,” Luke said. “New Year’s Eve.” He nodded vaguely, almost stupidly, like a man who had not for weeks past thought of what day it might be.
“Now tell me about you!” b
egged Vivian. She was so glad to see him that she was hardly aware of the others around her. Luke had pulled off his hat and was holding it crumpled in his hand, while dirty water dripped from the brim to the floor. All around the doorway were puddles and muddy footprints where the other men had come in. “You haven’t been all the way to Philadelphia in this time!” Vivian exclaimed.
One of Luke’s companions came hurrying over, elbowing fine gentlemen out of his way. He spoke to Luke.
Celia did not catch his words, but she heard Luke say, “Yes, yes, bring them in! Put them over there by the fire.” He turned sharply. “Clear that door! Can’t you hear me?—get out of the way.”
Two men came in carrying a stretcher. Behind them in the hall Celia saw more stretchers approaching. On the stretchers were men with blood on their shirts, and clumsy bandages on their heads or arms or legs. As the carriers set down the first stretcher by the fireplace she gave a gasp of horror, for the man lying there was Darren, and on Darren’s forehead was a tumble of golden-brown curls smeared with blood. Pushing through the crowd Celia rushed to the hearth and dropped on her knees beside him.
Darren seemed unconscious. Unlike Luke, he was shaved and he wore a good woolen suit, dripping now with the rain. Celia took his cold hand and rubbed it between her own. Leaning over the other side of the stretcher were Godfrey and Luke. “Darren will be all right,” Luke was saying, “if this rain doesn’t clog his lungs.” As he glanced up toward the carriers bringing another wounded man, he saw Celia. With strained courtesy he said, “Will you please move out of the way, ma’am?”
Evidently he saw her only as a blur. Celia got to her feet, feeling about as important as a fly on the wall.
Except for Luke and the men with him—about thirty of them besides the five or six who had been wounded—nobody seemed to know what had happened. The whole ballroom was a-buzz. Servants had crowded in, and were fluttering about as if they wished somebody would tell them what to do. The guests were asking questions of each other, or of the air; or were staring around as if they expected to see handwriting on the wall. Several men were hurrying hither and yon, nervously telling other people to be calm, while two or three women stood sobbing in the middle of the floor.
Just as Celia had the impression that nobody was acting with any sense, the group around the hearth parted as if they had heard a command. Down the aisle thus made came Vivian, a bottle in each hand. Behind her was Jimmy carrying a tray with glasses and a pitcher.
In spite of the dirty streaks on her white satin, Vivian looked elegant and tranquil. “We’ll have help for these men in a minute,” she said to Luke. “In the meantime a swig of brandy won’t hurt them, or you either.”
Luke gave her a grateful smile. Jimmy was already kneeling by the stretchers, and Vivian handed him the bottles as she went on talking to Luke. The only surgeon on the place, she said, was the Negro who took care of the animals, but he knows a good deal about treating human wounds too. One of the house-boys had been sent to bring him in. “And now,” Vivian ended crisply, “will you please tell me what’s been going on!”
Luke stood with one elbow on the marble mantelpiece, his hand hanging limp. In his other hand he held the glass of brandy that Jimmy had passed up to him. Now that his men were safe Luke was letting himself relax. He was tired, almost too tired to talk. On the floor Godfrey was raising Darren’s head and holding a drink to his lips; Jimmy was giving brandy and water to another man, and beside him, also giving aid, was the man he had addressed as Tom Lacy. A big fair young man, Tom had a bristly golden beard and a mane of straw-colored hair tied back with a leather cord.
Luke drained his glass. Still kneeling by the stretchers, Jimmy demanded, “Who did this, Luke?”
Luke drew a long tired breath. “Tories.”
“Tories!” gasped Jimmy, and with him everybody else near enough to have heard the word. In the country below Charleston Tory bands had done a lot of raiding and looting, but here near the Santee the rebel sentiment was so strong that they had made little trouble.
Luke nodded, a grim expression around his vivid blue eyes. “They were after a cargo of salt,” he said, “on one of Godfrey’s ships from Bermuda.”
Celia began to understand. There was no salt in South Carolina. From the first settlement of the colony their salt had come from the salt-springs of Bermuda, and now smuggling it in was a vital business. Luke went on,
“There’s a storehouse near the landing here, for bulky supplies that the Sea Garden boat brings up from Charleston. Godfrey had planned to store the salt there. Two or three days ago he got word that his ship was here, creeping among the islands, so he sent Darren and some others to get the salt into the storehouse. They were unloading the boat when a pack of Tories attacked. Thank God we came up in time.”
There was another flurry of questions. Luke said they had saved the salt and left men to guard it. Jimmy asked,
“What makes the Tories so bold, all of a sudden?”
“I suppose,” Luke said with a shrug, “they’ve heard the same news we have.”
More questions. The group around him had been thickening with every word he spoke. Now Vivian’s voice slipped like a thread of silk among the rougher voices of the men. “Tell us the news, Luke.”
He spoke crisply. “The British are on their way to attack Charleston.”
This time there was such a clatter of words that it was hard to make sense out of any of them. Celia moved closer, in time to hear Luke say,
“You’d better let Tom tell you. He’s the one who told me. I was on my way north with my wagon party when we met Tom and his fellows riding south. I let the wagons go on to Philadelphia without me—if there’s going to be trouble at home I want to be here.” He held out the brandy bottle to Tom.
Tom sat back on the floor, his legs crossed in front of him. Above his beard his face was stung red by the wind and his eyes looked sunken. When he spoke, his voice had the dull monotone of weariness.
Tom said that when he learned the British were preparing for an attack on Charleston, he and various other Carolinians who had been in the northern army had received permission to come home. He and several of his friends had left Philadelphia eight weeks ago. At that time, the British—who had been occupying New York for three years—had had a hundred ships in New York harbor ready to move south. Their leader was Sir Henry Clinton, commander-in-chief of the king’s forces in America. Everybody in Charleston would recognize his name, for Sir Henry Clinton had been in command of the British land forces at the battle of Fort Moultrie. His second in command now was the Earl of Cornwallis.
Clinton had plenty of men—British, Hessians, and of course here Tom’s voice lost its tired dullness and he spoke the word venomously—Tories. Naturally the Tories had a British commander. Americans were good enough to fight for his fat majesty but not good enough to lead their own regiments. These Tories were led by a Britisher named Tarleton. They called themselves “Tarleton’s Legion.”
While he talked Celia saw Vivian in the background, watching Luke, so glad to have him at home that she did not care how frightening was the news he brought. Plainly she was fonder of him than of Burton or Madge or Godfrey, just as she had cared more for Luke’s father than for any of her other husbands. Yet neither Luke nor his father would do what she wanted—and it occurred to Celia that maybe this was why she loved them best.
This was the first time Celia had seen Luke and Vivian together. She was surprised to notice how much alike they were. Luke was supposed to look like his father, and probably he did—for one thing, he had blue eyes while Vivian’s were brown, and his features were more rugged than hers—but there was a resemblance: the humorous look about their eyes, their determined mouths and strong chins, the general expression of both their faces. Nobody would be surprised to hear that they were mother and son.
Celia realized that she had not been listening to Tom Lacy, and she pulled her attention back. Tom was saying the British had sworn to turn Cha
rleston into a pile of trash. They had two good reasons for it. One was that they had never gotten over their licking at Fort Moultrie. The other reason was that they had to stop those supply trains. Traffic on the wagon track was so secret that few people realized how thick it was. But the British commanders knew.
Tom was interrupted by the arrival of the Negro surgeon and his helpers. The other men moved aside. They pressed around Luke and Tom, eager to hear more.
Celia drew back against the wall. She had thought she was not tired, but now her legs ached and her back hurt and she wanted to rest. Looking for a chair, she made her way along the wall; but every chair was occupied, and everybody was talking while nobody listened. She heard Madge Penfield say, “Bobby’s only fifteen but he’s been begging to get into it—now I’ll never keep him at home.”
At last Celia paused by the hall door where Luke had come in—how long ago? Hardly an hour, but in that little time how everything had changed!
She looked around at the wreckage of her betrothal ball. The floor was scratched, tracked with mud, smeared with dirty water. She could smell blood and a sharp odor of medicine. Jimmy and Godfrey were carrying Darren toward a bedroom. All around, women were weeping and shivering, men were pacing, shouting, slashing the air with their arms as if they were making speeches in Congress. Several of them were peering out of the windows as if they expected to see King George himself come riding through the rain. At the punch-table Paul de Courcey and some other young cavaliers were raising glasses in celebration of the glorious deeds they were going to do.
Somebody had thrown open the doors to the dining room. Now the men were gobbling the exquisite supper, going back and forth with bread and meat in their dirty hands, dripping gravy on their coats, spilling scraps all over the floor. Half of them, guzzling out of bottles, were already red in the face and talking too loud.
