A Sound Among the Trees

by Susan Meissner

  I am sorry I have not written to you sooner, but I have been in a bit of a daze with the goings-on of late. I cannot think of Mr. Davis as my president and not Mr. Lincoln. Papa liked Mr. Lincoln. He would’ve wanted him as president had he lived. And I cannot quite grasp the notion that so many states have left the Union. Grandfather says Virginia is sure to follow. He says it like he cannot wait for it to happen.

  I have been at the haberdashery more and more these last few weeks. Sometimes Grandmother is at the store too, but most days it is Eliza and me. Eliza is happiest when she is away from Holly Oak and at the haberdashery, and I do not think it is solely because men are forever coming to buy gloves and hats and ruffled shirts and trying to woo her. She and Grandfather argue about nearly everything, which makes for an unhappy house. Plus, Mama’s inability to emerge from her grief makes Eliza angry. It makes me sad, but it irritates Eliza. My mother used to be like Eliza. She is her older sister, so this should not surprise me. But it is getting easier for me to forget that my mother was once a lively woman who wasn’t afraid to say whatever she felt needed to be said.

  I have met a few girls at various parties. Yet even there the only talk is that of secession and freedom from Yankee chains. The parties have not been enjoyable.

  Pray for us, Eleanor. I am afraid. No one smiles in this house anymore. Inside the house all the anger feels heavy. The heaviness scares me some. How long can you hold up something heavy before your arms give out and it crashes down on you?

  Love to you and Grandmother. Do you think Cousin John would like it if I wrote to him at West Point?

  Yours always,

  Susannah Towsley

  27 April 1861

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  It has happened, Eleanor. Virginia has seceded. Shots were fired at Fort Sumter. Grandfather says there is no turning back now. He says the Confederacy, if is it to endure, must now be prepared to defend itself. Eliza told me President Lincoln has called for seventy-five thousand militiamen. Dear Eleanor, will he call upon the cadets at West Point? Have you heard from John or Will?

  I pray for their safety. And ours.

  Yours,

  Susannah Towsley

  27 July 1861

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  Terrible news. We have heard there has been a battle at Manassas. There was dreadful fighting.

  Men and women came to watch the battle on the hillsides as though it were a spectacle and had to flee from the gunfire. Many Union soldiers were killed. There is shouting in the streets today because the Confederate Army was victorious. This was all Grandfather talked of at supper tonight. And all the while he was boasting, Tessie was serving us without so much as a crease of consternation on her brow. What does she think of what the South has done? Is doing?

  Eliza said nothing the whole meal. She left the table before dessert and announced she was going to bed early. Her room was very quiet when I went upstairs later. The news of the battle must have tired her.

  I do not know how I will get my letters to you. Our mail is no longer being carried across the Union lines. If you do not hear from me, you will know it is not because I am not thinking of you, dear cousin. John and Will are safe, I trust? And Uncle?

  Grandfather has joined the cavalry. I didn’t even know he liked horses.

  I pray for you all,

  Yours always,

  Susannah Towsley

  16 September 1861

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dearest Eleanor,

  I do not know how this letter will reach you. But Eliza assures me it will. I was gathering my paper and pen to write to you today, supposing I would just save the letter until a time where I would be assured you would get it, and she whispered to me that she would see to it that this letter would be delivered to you and that all my letters would be delivered to you. I, of course, thought she was teasing me, and I told her it was not a very funny jest. She said she was not jesting. “What can you possibly mean, Eliza?” I whispered back. She told me she knows how dear you are to me and how much it would mean to me to keep writing to you and to know that you would actually receive my letters despite this war. “I know a way,” she said. “What way?” I asked. But she told me I didn’t need to know. She told me to give her the letter when I was done, and that you would soon have it. And to tell no one. How can she possibly move mail when no one else can? I am much afraid she is involved in something that could get her into trouble.

  Tomorrow the four of us—Mama, Grandmother, Eliza, and I—are to be shown how to sew Confederate uniforms. An officer came to the house today and told us we were needed because of our sewing skills to make uniforms for the Cause. His name is Lieutenant Nathaniel Page, and he works for the quartermaster. He is very tall and has the reddest hair I have ever seen. He told us the cut pieces for the uniforms will be brought to us from Richmond and we are to sew them together using the patterns he brought us and to attach the braid and buttons. And that someone from the quartermaster’s headquarters would come to Holly Oak once a week to inspect our progress, tally our quotas, and take our finished uniforms to the field.

  After he left, Eliza pulled me aside. “You are never to mention you have family in Maine around him,” she said. Her words nearly sent me into a faint. I had no idea what she meant. I thought the lieutenant had been most polite, and her words alarmed me. “You think he is dangerous?” I asked. “No,” she said. “He is not someone to be worried about. He is someone who does not need to know you have relatives in Maine. Do you understand? He does not need to know that.” I asked why she was so anxious about Lt. Page if he was someone we weren’t to worry about. But she did not answer my question. She remarked instead that Lt. Page had been quite taken by me. I said she was quite mistaken. She said, “No. He has taken a fancy to you, Susannah. I am sure he will be the one to deliver the fabric and inspect our progress.” And though I felt my face warm to crimson, I told her I had no desire for a beau right now.

  And she said these days are not about me.

  Eleanor, I do not know what to think. Please, please, say nothing to anyone. Especially not to Will. I know Will does not know I am fond of him, but even so, please do not tell him what Eliza said about the lieutenant.

  I know you perhaps will not be able to get a letter back to me. Or maybe you will. I am not really sure what Eliza is capable of.

  You are always in my prayers,

  Susannah Towsley

  20 November 1861

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dearest Eleanor,

  I am writing to you now in secret. Only Eliza knows that I am still sending letters to you. Twice I’ve told myself I must simply stop writing to you because surely my aunt is involved in something dangerous. But here I sit writing you anyway. You are my only friend, the only person I can trust. Eliza tells me she is certain my letters are being delivered to you. But she also tells me it is not possible for her to get any of your letters to me. I asked her why not. She told me—in that way of hers that is both gentle and scalding—to pull my head out of the clouds and remember that we are at war.

  Grandfather has gone off with the Virginia cavalry, so it is just us women in the house. Every day there is talk of a battle here or a battle there and of Union soldiers being taken prisoner and of the rebels putting the sorry Yankees in their place. Some here in Fred-ericksburg are loyalists; at least there were some who are loyalists. I think perhaps they’ve all been chastised into silence or have left. If you are a loyalist, Eleanor, you are treated with such contempt, like a criminal. Grandmother has told me not to mention to anyone where I was born or where Papa was from, because I am a Southern girl now. But there are people in this town who know me, who remember that my mother married a man from Maine and that we used to live in Washington. “What about them?” I asked my grandmother. And she said my only concern is to give no one any reaso
n to recall any of that. She did not ask me if I was a loyalist. If she had, I would have told her I don’t know what I am. It’s as if she doesn’t want to know what I think.

  Sometimes I think Eliza slips out of her room at night and leaves the house while we are all sleeping. She is home every morning, and her shoes are never muddy nor her hems wet. But sometimes I smell the outside air on her and in her room. And it is too cold for the windows to be left open at night. I think perhaps she is involved with loyalists. I can’t help but wonder who she is giving these letters to and what would happen if she were to be caught. And of course I wonder if she reads the letters before she hands them off to whoever is taking them across the lines. But she offers no evidence that she has read them.

  Grandmother took me to Richmond last week to buy inventory for the haberdashery, and all the streets were atwitter about the sickly Yankee prisoners who are languishing there in the ship chandlery on Tobacco Row. Richmond is cold and gray. I was happy to come home.

  Eliza was right about Lt. Page. He has been the one to make rounds at Holly Oak to inspect our progress with the uniforms. He comes every Friday; Grandmother always invites him to stay to supper, and he always accepts. I think Grandmother is hoping Lt. Page will find Eliza an attractive and suitable girl to woo and marry.

  But I am afraid Eliza was right about Lt. Page in other ways too. I catch him looking at me over his wine glass and his spectacles, and when he inspects my stitching, he leans in close enough for me to catch the fragrance of the starch in his collar. It makes me very nervous. Eliza watches him all the time, and I think Grandmother thinks Eliza is jealous of the lieutenant’s attentions toward me. But it is plain to me that Eliza is not jealous in the least. Eliza is thinking. Always thinking. She doesn’t spend her days wondering how to win the war; she spends them wondering how to end it. Two different things.

  I wish I knew where Cousin John and Will were. I know it is too much to suppose you might get a letter to me to let me know they are safe and well. I worry that they are here in the South somewhere, cold and far from the woodlands of Maine, or caged like animals in the Richmond ship chandler building. Or wounded or ill. I wish I knew they were safe. I dreamed of Will last night. I dreamed he was the one leaning close to me. Instead of smelling starch, I smelled pine.

  I pray for you all,

  Yours always,

  Susannah Towsley

  25 January 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  Dear Eleanor,

  The streets are quiet today. The Confederacy has lost its first major battle in a place called Fishing Creek. It is far away from here, in Kentucky. But you’d think it was right next door. The young men and all the fathers and uncles and brothers are gone, so it is just old men pottering around in their wool coats and mittens, wondering what this defeat means. And of course the women here can only suppose that a defeat means Southern men are dead.

  Eliza read the news of it in the newspaper and said not a word. Grandmother read it and promptly asked Tessie for a hot cup of tea. Mama, like Eliza, also said not a word. She is talking more these days but only to herself. She whispers things but not to anyone in particular. I told Grandmother it didn’t seem right that she was doing that, and she said of all the things to worry about right now, a little whispering is not so terrible.

  I told Eliza later when we were alone that I was writing another letter to send to you and, I don’t know why, but I suddenly asked her if what she was doing with them could get her into trouble. She hesitated for a second and then said, “We are already, all of us, in trouble. If this”—and she pointed to the newspaper’s front page, which was covered from top to bottom with nothing but inky words about the war—“is not trouble, then I surely don’t know what is.” And then I asked her if she was a loyalist. And she just smiled, like I had said something sweet and comedic. “How much do you really want to know, Susannah?” This she practically whispered to me. “About what?” I said. “I think you know what,” she replied. “Where do you go when you go out at night?” I whispered. And her eyes widened just a little. I don’t think she knew I had discovered she was doing this. “If I don’t tell you, you will never have to lie for me,” she said softly, as if she knew I would lie to protect her. That I was just like her. That there were two sides and she and I were on a side together and if someone asked me about her, that someone would be on the other side. I was suddenly very afraid for her. “Why are you doing this?” I asked. Even as I was asking her, there was a caller at the door. We heard Tessie open it and welcome Lt. Page. “We all have our part to play, Susannah,” she said. And she rose to greet our guest.

  Lt. Page stayed for dinner. Then he asked me to walk with him out to his horse and might Eliza join us? It was not a bitterly cold night, but still, it is winter and it surprised me that he would ask. A winter’s night is not the time for strolls. When we were properly wrapped and scarved, we stepped outside. The sky was shimmering with stars. Lt. Page told me his duties with the war will prevent him from coming to Fredericksburg as often as he’d like but that he would like to write to me. He told me he had already asked my grandmother, since my grandfather was away at the war, if he might do that, and she had consented. I could feel Eliza’s eyes on me as Lt. Page spoke to me, I could feel her urging me to accept whatever attentions Lt. Page wished to bestow on me. And that she wished it for reasons all her own. I could only guess what she might gain from my having a liaison with a Confederate officer. I wanted to shake that look of hunger out of her. I politely told him he could write to me. He kissed my hand and left with our weekly quota of uniforms tucked under his arm, smiling. What else could I say? It would have been rude to refuse him.

  As soon as he was away, I turned to Eliza and told her I am not the kind of person to entertain someone with the intent to deceive. “I am not in love with Lt. Page,” I said. “He is a kind man who deserves honesty. I don’t care which side of this war he is on. I will not let you use him. I am not like you.” As she turned to go back into the house, she told me everyone is like her. We all want what we want, and when it matters enough to us, we will do what we must to have it.

  6 March 1862

  Holly Oak, Fredericksburg, Virginia

  My dear Eleanor,

  I trust you are well and that you would have only good news of Cousin John and Will and Uncle if I were to hear from you. I shall make this letter short since I do not know if you will get it. Grandmother and Eliza had a terrible argument last night, and Eliza left the house. It is nearly noon and she has not returned. We had been sewing all day, and my fingers were sore, so I was in my room resting when I heard them shouting. I stepped out onto the landing. Their raised voices were coming from the parlor, but I couldn’t make out the words. I thought I heard my grandmother say something about my grandfather, that he was in danger. Or maybe she said Eliza was in danger. I could not tell. My mother was standing just outside her bedroom door, listening. I started for the stairs, and Mama quietly said, “Let them be.” Then she turned, went back inside her room, and closed the door. I went downstairs anyway.

  Tessie was standing just outside the parlor doors, which were half open. She had a tea tray in her hands, and it was obvious to me she couldn’t decide if she should bring the tray in and intrude on the argument or stand outside with it until the yelling ended.

  I stood next to her, and we both heard my grandmother say, “This isn’t a game, Eliza!” And Eliza said, “I am the only one in this house who realizes it has never been a game! From the beginning this has never been a game!” Then Grandmother said, “Where do you go at night, Eliza? Where can you possibly be going in the middle of the night alone and without a chaperon?” For a second there was silence, and then Eliza said, “To meet a lover. Will that satisfy you? I go to meet a lover.” But there wasn’t an ounce of shame in her voice. I think even Tessie could tell she was lying.

  Grandmother didn’t say anything for a moment. But when she found her voice, she did
n’t yell. She said what she said as if she were holding back a hurricane. “I will not let you put this family in danger. You will not set foot out of this house at night. You will not.” And Eliza calmly said, “You think I am the one putting this family in danger? You think I am? Think again, Mother.”

  Again there was silence. And then the swishing of skirts. Tessie and I just stood there to see who would emerge from the room. It was Eliza. She looked at me, and her eyes were shining with resentment. “I didn’t tell her,” I whispered. And she said, “I know you didn’t.” She grabbed her wrap off the hall tree, and she was out the front door. A swirl of chilly air spun into the house as she slammed the door.

  A second later, Grandmother called to Tessie, as if she knew she had been standing outside the door with the tray, and asked for her tea.

  I don’t know what to think, Eleanor. Sometimes I admire Eliza, sometimes she scares me senseless.

  Lt. Page has written me three times. I have written him once. He wants to come visit me when he comes back through Fredericksburg. He didn’t mention anything about the uniforms. The officer who comes for the uniforms now is my mother’s age and frowns all the time. Grandmother has never asked him to stay for supper.

  Lt. Page has begun signing his letters, “Yours very sincerely” and “With much affection, Nathaniel.”

  Just writing those words to you makes me blush, Eleanor. I wish I was in Maine with you. I wish I was writing letters to Will from your house in Wiscasset instead of letters to Lt. Page from Holly Oak.