Land of the Brave and the Free (Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book 7)

by Michael Phillips

  But all the rest of that afternoon and evening, my mind was filled with the two images of Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant—what it must have been like the moment their eyes met in the house in Appomattox, and what it must have felt like as their hands clasped.

  Was that unity?

  Did that handshake symbolize, perhaps for the first time—even more than what had happened when the founding fathers had written the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—the true uniting of the northern and southern factions of this great land?

  Was that moment the true beginning of what could rightfully now be called the United States of America?

  I drifted off to sleep that night pondering the question and wondering what Jesus thought of it all.

  When the letter came I didn’t even look at the postmark. I first stared at it with disbelief. My reaction was so unlike when Mr. Hay had given me the one addressed to the White House. This time I was so calm that I almost put it away until later. I hadn’t thought I would hear from him again . . . at all! I suppose I’d already prepared my emotions to stay in place and not rise up with unpredictable femininity.

  But it was no use! The moment I saw the handwriting, a quiet urge—small at first, but steadily rising—began to take hold of me to rip the envelope apart and get to the letter inside. I didn’t stop to analyze why the writing looked so different. I recognized it, wasn’t that enough? I knew I’d seen my name in that familiar hand before. I knew the particular curl at the top of the C and the wide graceful H.

  I did my best to keep up a sedate outward demeanor. But inside, my heart was starting to pound. At the first opportunity I excused myself. I wanted to take a long walk outside and be alone as I read.

  Dear Corrie,

  With the war now over, it is time, in my opinion, for us to make amends and put the past behind us. We both went our separate ways for a time, doing what events compelled us to do. You will perhaps be gratified to hear me admit, which I freely do now to you, that I was wrong about the North and the South. It would certainly seem that I indeed put my money on the wrong horse, as it were, and that you were on the side of the winner, after all.

  Experience is a cruel teacher sometimes, but a necessary one. And even though the events of this last year have gone very badly for me, your own Mr. Lincoln has met with his demise as well. Thus it would seem that we both, you and I, Corrie, must face the future with a sad realism that life does not always yield the bright visions we dream of.

  There have been things we both said and did in days past, in the heat of the moment. But one thing I sincerely meant was that I found you a remarkable young lady whom I was capable of admiring greatly. I still feel the same.

  I would like to suggest that we let bygones be bygones, as the expression goes. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me standing you up in Sacramento, I will likewise forgive you for that nasty business in Richmond. We can both chalk it up to the war, which makes us all villains for a season.

  Those times are past. I have carefully watched and read about you and all you have done. I have kept track of you, Corrie, and through a couple of the northern papers you wrote for last year have managed to track you to this address in Washington. I am hopeful you will find it within you to open your heart a crack again to one whom I venture to say once meant something rather more than a mere friendship to you.

  The war ruined most in the South. But not all. For those able to see the handwriting on the wall, and read between the lines of what it said, there were great opportunities in the final months. Not many Southerners were shrewd enough to use the South’s loss to their advantage. But I was one of those who was able to come away untarnished. Opportunity, Corrie, remember! It’s all about being in the right place to strike when opportunity presents itself!

  All this is by way of saying that I happen to have become quite a wealthy man, and it is my hope you will want to share in that wealth with me. I am presently in New York, where I maintain a suite of rooms at the Matador Palace. You are indisputably a woman of the world by now, Corrie, sufficiently so, I would think, not to be taken aback by an invitation to join me here in the city for a few days. I will wine and dine you and show you a time such as you have never had before in your life.

  I do admire you, and know you are one who could go far in the right circles, especially if you were to share your career with mine. Your visit here will enable us to talk at leisure about our future together.

  I am, yours fondly,

  Cal Burton

  I could barely finish reading it, I was so furious!

  Furious at Cal for even suggesting such a thing! How dare he! Didn’t he know me any better than that?

  Furious at Christopher, too, as irrational as it sounds, for not being the one to have written me. Didn’t he know how desperately I was longing to have even a single word from him?

  Furious at myself I suppose, too. Furious for being such a stupid, emotional woman who was acting like a teenager in love! How could I have let myself be duped? It had obviously not been Christopher’s writing on the envelope! Why didn’t I notice?

  Woman of the world! Ha!

  That’s the last thing I want to be, Cal! Wine and dine me in New York at a posh hotel! What makes him think I would care a straw for all that!

  But all my ranting and fuming over Cal’s letter couldn’t keep the bitter tears of disappointment away, and eventually they came in a flood. I was so glad to be alone. I walked on, crying with abandon, my face wet. I wasn’t really mad at all, just so hurt and disappointed and confused . . . and feeling so very lonely all of a sudden.

  I didn’t want to admit that my expectations had been dashed in hoping for a letter from Christopher, only to open it and be stung with a bitter memory from the past. Oh, I did long to hear from him! And now I couldn’t help thinking of his face. I thought about what he would say to me if he were here. How I wished I could go back to the convent and then see him come walking through the door just like that Easter Sunday at Mrs. Timms’. By then I couldn’t stop myself, and I dreamed of what it would be like to run to him, just like I had on that day, and feel him holding me in his arms for several moments as all the loneliness I had been feeling melted away.

  But then the daydreams dissolved, and I again felt the warm tears on my face, and all the loneliness returned even worse, and with it the unwelcome image of another face I didn’t want to see—Cal Burton’s!

  I wondered how the war could have made Cal a rich man. Certainly not in an honest way, if I knew him as I thought I did! The collapse of the South had probably left thousands of people just ripe to being taken advantage of, and I was sure that’s exactly what Cal had done. He was the kind of person who could take any situation and turn it to his advantage. And he would call it opportunity!

  That’s what he was trying to do with me! Was I too just another of his so-called opportunities!

  Villains, Cal? I thought to myself. The war didn’t make everyone a villain! I happen to know one that it made a man of, Cal! Ten times the man you’ll ever be, though if you saw him, you’d probably laugh to hear me say so, because your kind can never see the true manhood he walks in. God forgive me for what I may have done wrong, but I hope it didn’t make a villain of me either, Cal—though from the sound of it that seems exactly what it made of you.

  With tears flowing again, I ripped Cal’s letter into tiny shreds, threw them down on the ground and stamped the pieces into the grass and dirt, all spongy and wet from last night’s rain.

  Then I ran toward the woods. If I couldn’t cry the loneliness out of my heart, maybe I could drive it out by sheer exhaustion.

  Three days later the other letter arrived.

  Numerous comments immediately circulated about the doubling of the convent’s mail service since my arrival.

  “Don’t you all know what an important young lady Corrie is?” said Sister Janette. “She writes for all the biggest newspapers and was on special assignment from the White Hous
e. Why shouldn’t she be getting important mail?”

  The mention of the White House quickly brought an end to the conversation. It was still too soon even to think about President Lincoln’s death without a sudden horrifying reminder of loss.

  Again I sought the fields with the unopened letter in my hand. This time I truly was hesitant to open it. An indescribable fear seized me. I didn’t know if I could endure any more pain without my heart crumbling to pieces altogether.

  As I walked away from the convent buildings, the envelope burned in my hands, even as the fear burned in my heart. What could I do but read it? Even though it be the worst . . . I had to know!

  I glanced down at the address again, over which Mrs. Richards had written the box number of the convent. But my eyes weren’t looking at her writing but the hand that had penned my name underneath. This time there was no mistake. I looked at the postmark. The word Richmond was clearly visible.

  At last I tore open the envelope and pulled out the papers inside. There were two pages. I breathed in deeply, then started to read. The first two words were the same as the letter from Cal, but after that they were as different as night and day. I savored every word, trying not to read too quickly.

  Dear Corrie,

  First let me humbly ask your forgiveness for my distant silence during your final two days here. I am so sorry! I know it was difficult and burdensome to you, and you no doubt have been fretting ever since over what it could have meant. Many things were on my mind, some of which were capable, even as they can do to a woman at times, of causing a man not to act himself.

  I am unable to explain myself further at present. If the time should ever come when it is appropriate, I will make a full confession of my mental state at the time. Please, only forgive me and think of it no more, and be not anxious that in any way whatever you did anything to annoy or offend me. I doubt such could ever be the case! The emotional and mental turmoil prompting the quietude of my countenance all originated with me and not in any way in yourself. I thank you, even from this distance, for your kindness in granting this request for forgiveness.

  My cheeks were already drenched with tears of happiness and relief. “Forgive you! Oh, Christopher,” I whispered, “don’t you know!” I dashed the back of my hand across my face, then read on.

  Here all is the same . . . yet nothing is the same. An emptiness fills all the silent spaces. As I said to you before, Mrs. Timms misses you, the cows and chickens and goats and house all miss you . . . as do I most of all. But beyond that, there is a silent emptiness that the war’s end has brought to the South. This war was never a noble one. Yet as long as it endured, there persisted a vain proud hope within the southern consciousness that somehow a day of prevailing would come when glory would belong to the Confederacy in something of a dreamlike memory of the 1840s and 1850s. I daresay those were not such pleasant times for the slaves. And yet the illusion persisted, right up until a few months ago, that happy days would come back to all of us again. The southern pride has slipped away as the Confederacy comes to an end. There is devastation everywhere, especially of the spirit.

  The happy days are gone, the South is quiet, and its women mourn in black. Not so much for the loss of their sons and husbands and fathers as for the loss of their pride. I do not understand it myself. My pride is the first thing I should wish to lose, and the last thing in all the world I should ever wish to come near me again. Alas, for me! They of the South have lost theirs, but I, who hate the thing, still find clinging with stubbornness to me!

  I’m sure you’ve heard of Mary Chesnut, wife of the southern senator, and, like you, a journal writer. She is often quoted in our papers these days. She wrote on the first of April: “Richmond has fallen—and I have no heart to write about it. . . . They are too many for us. Everything lost in Richmond.” Her words reflect the sad, depressing air that is everywhere and over everything.

  And I read in the New York World—perhaps you have already seen it: “There is a stillness, in the midst of which Richmond, with her ruins, her spectral roofs . . . and her unchanging spires, rests beneath a ghastly, fitful glare. . . . We are under the shadow of ruins. From the pavements where we walk . . . stretch a vista of devastation. . . . The wreck, the loneliness, seem interminable. . . . There is no sound of life, but the stillness of the catacomb, only as our footsteps fall dull on the deserted sidewalk, and a funeral troop of echoes bump . . . against the dead walls and closed shutters in reply, and this is Richmond. Says a melancholy voice: ‘And this is Richmond.’ ”

  Such it is, Corrie. I have been twice into the city since you left. I have walked her desolate streets, praying for God to rebuild this nation and to give the South back her life. Alas, I hated the Confederacy, but I love the South, and I loved Richmond. I have heard my own footsteps echo through the hollow alleys. I have climbed through the fallen rubble of bricks where once were buildings of commerce and business and life. I sought my old church to see if anyone was about, anyone who needed comfort or help. But it was shut up tight and silent as a tomb. The only people about drifted aimlessly and silently along the brick-strewn streets. There were no smiles, no eye contact, no shared humanity. They all want to wallow in their misery.

  Adding to the desolation, though none here would admit to such a heresy, is the loss of Abraham Lincoln, a great man by any estimation. Grant and Lee are both great men, it is said. But greatness reveals itself at many levels through the course of history, and men of Lincoln’s stature come but once in a generation or two. By my perception he was the one man who, having guided us through the war, the reunited nation might have looked to for the strong leadership necessary at such an urgent and critical time. But now he is gone.

  By his one desperate act, the actor Booth achieved the larger stage he sought, and thinking to avenge the South, in fact, did it more harm and damage than anything any man could have done. I fear now that the process of reconstruction will be long, tedious, and bitterly painful for the South. Lincoln was probably the best friend the South could have had at this moment in her cloudy history.

  I am kept busy these days, not only with the farm, but with doing what I can to help the huge flow of persons suddenly roaming the byways of the South—freed Negroes, soldiers trying to get back to their homes—wounded, shoeless, starving. Oh, the grief that is all around, and how weak I feel to help! I have even encountered two or three men who were in Libby Prison and who remember me from there. Mrs. Timms’ barn some nights resembles a hospital ward and rescue mission all in one!

  I know I am going on and on. Forgive me . . . again! You cannot know how pleasurable it was to have someone with whom to share my thoughts. I fear I grew addicted to it altogether. My journal thus now seems a very un­interesting and impersonal companion alongside someone with a face and a mouth that moves and eyes that light up when she reads the words I write, as I flatter myself yours are doing at this moment.

  If you should do me the honor of returning the communication of these sheets with some of your own penned to me, I promise my eyes shall dance and my mouth laugh over your words, too, if you find such a proposal more interesting than your journal.

  You left your medal from the President here. You had shown it to us and it was sitting on the mantel when the dreadful news came to us about Mr. Lincoln. I will, however, guard it with my very life, and keep it safe for you.

  With regards kinder than you can know,

  Christopher Braxton

  I just had to stop crying! Every time I turned around I was in tears again!

  By the time I got to Christopher’s signature I could hardly see the letter on the page from my wet eyes! And how I did laugh with his quaint ways of expressing himself with such dry wit. He knew I would laugh too, and I could hear his voice chuckling as he set his pen down. He probably knew I would cry too! If not, then he didn’t know me yet as well as I suspected he did.

  I hadn’t even thought about the medal. My mind had been too occupied with other things.
r />   What a weight was lifted from my shoulders with his letter. I had been so worried that he was angry, that something had changed, or that I might never hear from him again.

  My tears and laughter and smiles gradually subsided. I continued to walk along, out of sight from the convent now, over a little hill toward the north.

  I had received two letters this week. And there could not have been any stronger contrast between the two, nor between the two men who had written them. How could I ever have been so blind to the realities of his nature and character as to be fascinated, even in love, with Cal? The very thought both embarrassed and baffled me.

  I suppose that a man’s or a woman’s true nature doesn’t always show itself until life’s stresses and strains knock it around some to see how strong the stuff is that it’s made of. When a man deliberately tries to flatter a young woman, as Cal did, if she doesn’t keep her wits about her, she’ll get her head turned in just the opposite direction from where she ought to be looking.

  And I hadn’t always had the benefit of knowing a man like Christopher with whom to compare men like Cal. If you’ve never known the real thing, then the counterfeit looks real enough. Somebody told me that’s the way it is with diamonds. The cheap, flawed gems look dazzling to the untrained eye. But once you’ve seen a pure, flawless, brilliantly cut stone, all at once your eyes are open to all the marks and scars and dark or dull spots in those of less value.