Elizabeth MacPherson 07 - MacPherson’s Lament Read online

  The Roanoke, moving steadily upriver, away from the burning ironclads, had not gone more than a quarter of a mile before an explosion shook the water, making the vessel lurch to starboard and tremble like a sapling in a hurricane. The flames had reached the ironclad’s magazine, whose loaded shells had not been removed by the departing crew. When the shell room exploded, it lit the shells’ fuses and catapulted the live ammunition high into the air above the river, giving the navy a send-off of spectacular fireworks. But no one cheered.

  The ships endured an hour’s wait at one of the drawbridges between Richmond and Drewry’s Bluff, while the troops who had set the evening’s bonfires were allowed passage across the bridge. The route they had taken was punctuated with patches of leaping flames as the Confederates—literally—burned their bridges behind them. While the sailors were waiting for the span to be raised, the sky began to go from black to gray, and finally first light gave them a glimpse of the devastation.

  Whole city blocks were now ablaze, and the Tredegar Iron Works flamed like hell itself, rending the morning air with the shudders of the exploding shells within it. A dense cloud of smoke hung over the city, like a blanket laid over a corpse. There wouldn’t be much left for the Yankees to take now, and the people of Richmond knew it. A great throng of them were gathered on the Manchester side of the river, trying to escape the conflagration.

  The gunboat docked, and the men of the James River fleet tumbled ashore, weighted down with all their belongings, too stunned from the rush of disasters to think what to do next.

  “I hope they don’t expect us to march any considerable distance,” said Bridgeford. “Most of us couldn’t do more than a couple of miles at the best of times, not being used to it.”

  “I reckon I can walk,” said Gabe Hawks. “I followed Stonewall from one end of Virginia to t’other. But I ain’t no damn pack mule.”

  “Ah, Hawks, but at the moment you look like one.” Bridgeford laughed and pointed to the jumble of necessities they carried: a mess-kettle, bags of bread, chunks of salted pork, pots and pans, tea, sugar, and tobacco. Which of these precious items could they leave behind in their flight? And what would become of them if they did not?

  “Hey, you old salts! How do you like navigating on land?” A line of cavalry was passing by on the road—boys scarcely older than Gabe, looking thin and tired in their tattered gray. But when they saw the grounded sailors, staggering about on dry land with pans around their necks, like a gaggle of stranded geese, they cheered up considerably, and drifted out of sight still laughing and making catcalls at their less fortunate comrades in arms.

  Admiral Semmes, without a ship under him, looked just as lost as anyone. He gave orders for the gunboats to be burned and set adrift. Then he called on his captains to muster the troops. Only now the captains were to be called colonels.

  “My orders are to join General Lee in the field with all my forces!” the admiral called out. “And we shall proceed accordingly.”

  Bridgeford nudged Gabe and said softly, “But where the devil is Lee, and how do we get there?”

  Just then one of the officers shouted, “To the railroad depot! Forward, march!”

  And they lurched off into a cloud of smoke and road dust.

  Gabriel Hawks had just rejoined the army.

  Newtown, Edinburgh

  Dear Bill,

  If I hadn’t received a terse (and utterly incomprehensible) letter from Mother on the same day your note arrived, I would not have dreamed of believing you. In fact, I would have been appalled at your lack of taste and judgment in perpetrating such a prank, and I might have considered giving your name to every insurance salesman in Danville, just to keep you occupied for a bit as unpleasantly as possible. But apparently it is true. Mother and Daddy are getting a divorce. I still haven’t fully grasped it. I suppose it would be useless asking them to stay together for the sake of the children when both of us have postgraduate degrees? But still!

  I feel as if I’d just fallen off a tightrope and there is no longer any safety net beneath me. I suppose that family is one of those things that people simply take for granted. Or maybe I stopped thinking of Mother and Daddy as people with new experiences ahead of them. To me they just were, like Mount Rushmore or Old Faithful. They weren’t supposed to change. I was the one who was allowed to go off and have adventures. They were supposed to be the one constant in my life. I don’t like this new world one bit. Can we put it back the way it was? Did you try?

  I tried calling home about six times, but Mother is being brittle and maddeningly perky. “These things happen.” “Of course we’ll always be friends.” You know the sort of rot people speak when they don’t want to tell you what’s really going on. I didn’t want to push it. And I called Daddy at his office and got much the same line, except in a more dignified and forbidding tone.

  I know you think I’m going to be on the next plane to Richmond, but I can’t. I have job interviews coming up here and I simply can’t get away. Anyhow, divorces take months and months, so I suppose there’s no real rush. Perhaps we ought to let them simmer down a bit before we do any meddling. But meanwhile you must try to find out what’s going on! We can’t deal with this thing until we know the facts. Tell Mother that as her attorney you have to be told everything. And keep me posted. I mean often.

  Bill, I’m relying on you. You’re the family’s only hope. Don’t let this happen!

  Love,

  Elizabeth

  “A few more days for to tote the weary load”

  —STEPHEN FOSTER,

  “My Old Kentucky Home”

  CHAPTER 2

  “I’M NOT GOING to be here this afternoon,” said A. P. Hill. “Can you manage by yourself?”

  “By myself?” Bill MacPherson looked up from his paperwork. “You mean alone? Abandoned? What about Edith?”

  “Try to bear up, Bill. It’s Edith’s day off, remember? Tuesday afternoons and all day Friday.”

  The law firm of MacPherson and Hill was now ten days old, still solvent, and boasted a caseload of half a dozen clients. They had also engaged a part-time secretary-receptionist: Edith Creech, a recent graduate of the local business college. Edith’s salary was as modest as her grade point average. She was maddeningly slow at office work and her spelling showed a creativity that bordered on genius, but she was a notary public, a useful asset to a law firm, and she was thoroughly in awe of her attorney employers, which went a long way toward offsetting her shortcomings.

  “And where are you going this afternoon?” Bill wanted to know.

  A. P. Hill reddened. “I’ve got an appointment,” she said, in a tone calculated to discourage further inquiry. “But you should be all right. Have you heard from Trowbridge yet?”

  “Yep. He called this morning with his first question. It’s a doozy. Are you ready for this? He wants to know: if a neighbor’s tomcat gets the Trowbridge tabby in the family way, can the tomcat’s owner be sued for child—er, kitten—support?”

  His partner rolled her eyes. “Oh, just say no!” she advised.

  “That’s easy for you to say, Powell,” Bill grumbled. “You’re a Republican. But Old Trowbridge wants chapter and verse. I did inform him that the kittens would have to have blood tests to prove paternity.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Did you remember to check the mail before you came in?”

  “Yes. That’s the other thing I was going to tell you about. You know that newspaper ad we ran? Did we say that we were catering in legal services to the deranged or anything?”

  “Why?”

  “They seem to be seeking us out. First the Trowbridges and now this.” He held up a flowered envelope. “This letter came today, addressed to us—MacPherson and Hill, Attorneys at Law. Dear Sirs: If it is entirely convenient with you, I shall be calling on Friday afternoon at one o’clock to discuss a small legal matter in which I should like to avail myself of your services. Sincerely, Flora Dabney. And—get this, Po
well—Miss Dabney has enclosed a picture of herself in costume.”

  “Let me see that!” A. P. Hill snatched the picture from her partner’s outstretched hand. From the sepia photograph a lovely but earnest-looking young woman gazed back at her with big, intelligent eyes. Flora Dabney looked a proper Edwardian gentlewoman in her coat with wide lapels and a frilled blouse with a jabot of lace at her throat. Her dark hair was brushed away from her forehead and tied with a ribbon at the back, a style that eschewed glamour, but did not hide her wholesome good looks.

  “I think I’m in love,” said Bill.

  “She looks too intelligent for you,” said A.P., handing back the photograph. “She doesn’t say what she wants?”

  “No. Women seem determined to be mysterious in my presence. Where are you going this afternoon, by the way?”

  His partner smiled sweetly. “Just out. Now try not to do anything that will get you disbarred.”

  Bill was still laughing merrily as A.P. left the office. She glanced at her watch. Nearly one o’clock. Just as well that she’d packed her gear this morning. She hated to leave the car parked downtown with the rifle in the trunk, but it couldn’t be helped. Now she had to go into the ladies’ room and change. It wouldn’t do to show up in her present outfit: a pink linen coat and skirt and high heels. Better stow them in a locked briefcase in the trunk, just to be safe, after she changed into her other set of clothes.

  Anyone loitering about on the sidewalk in front would have insisted that A. P. Hill did not leave the building that afternoon. However, a teenaged boy in a hat and overcoat might have been observed leaving the second-floor ladies’ room with a briefcase.

  An hour later Bill was still attempting to make sense of the vagaries of feline paternity when an elderly woman appeared in the outer office. She wore a black silk dress and pearls and she had posture that a general would envy. She took in her surroundings in one piercing glance. But when she saw Bill peering at her through the open door of his office, her demeanor changed to one of fluffy amiability. She smiled as she came in, motioning for him to sit back down.

  “A. P. Hill?” she said eagerly.

  “No, ma’am. She’s my partner, but she’s not here right now. And our secretary’s gone, too. I’m Bill MacPherson.”

  The woman in black surveyed Bill’s shabby surroundings. Her sharp eyes flickered over the framed diploma and the secondhand furniture. They paused momentarily on the gaily appareled rodent leering at her from the corner.

  “I think you’ll do fine,” she declared, settling happily into the captain’s chair Bill had purchased from Goodwill for the comfort of his clients. “I thought I’d drop by today because Lydia had to come downtown anyway to do her incessant courthouse research. I just know she drives them all crazy down there in the records office. Tracing her family tree, you know. She can’t quite prove a connection between her people and Robert E. Lee, so now she’s trying to find out the maternal grandmother of the man he bought Traveller from!”

  Bill blinked, trying to find his way into the conversation.

  “That’s why we thought it would be such fun to have A. P. Hill as an attorney. She might know something about the general’s family connections that the Danville Courthouse doesn’t have a record of.” She stopped herself, as if she had just realized that the young man might see this preference as a personal slight. “But of course our legal business has nothing to do with the war at all,” she hastened to explain. “It’s just a simple little old transaction. I bet you could do it standing on your head.”

  Bill pictured Mr. Trowbridge bursting in and shouting, “Is it legal for an attorney to plead a case while standing on his head?” He smiled and ventured a question of his own. “Were we expecting you this afternoon, ma’am?”

  Her gray eyes widened in surprise. “Why, I hope so, young man! I took the trouble to write you.”

  Bill began to shuffle through the papers on his desk when she leaned over and announced, “There! You have my picture right there on top of your desk calendar.” She pointed one white-gloved finger at the sepia portrait of the Edwardian beauty.

  Bill stared from one to the other. “You … I mean to say … Is that—”

  She nodded with a satisfied little smile. “Oh, yes! It’s me all right. A good many years ago, before I married Mr. Dabney, rest his soul. My name is Flora.”

  “But why did you send me this picture?”

  Flora Dabney took a deep breath. “Well, young man, I’ll tell you. I get rather tired of being dismissed as just an old lady, so I thought I’d make a proper first impression on you. Just so you’d know who I really am, underneath this sixty years of erosion.”

  Bill smiled. “I wish I’d known you then.”

  The old lady’s eyes twinkled. “I expect I’d have led you a pretty dance, Mr. MacPherson. Now let us get to the matter at hand. My friends and I would like you to sell our house. It’s a lovely old colonial with Corinthian columns, ten bedrooms, fireplaces—”

  “Mrs. Dabney! Whoa! Wait! Stop. I’m really sorry, ma’am. You’re a little confused. You see, I’m a lawyer, not a real estate agent. But if you’d like me to find you one …” He reached for the telephone book.

  “We don’t want a Realtor,” she said, motioning for him to put the book away. “We need a lawyer. You see, there are only eight of us left and the house is just too big. The upkeep is very expensive, so we thought we’d see about selling it.”

  “Eight of you own a house?” Bill’s mind was reeling at the legal intricacies of such a transaction.

  “It amounts to that,” said Flora Dabney. “There is a deed of something or other, leaving the house to the widows and daughters of Confederate veterans.”

  “A deed of trust? A deed of covenant?”

  “Yes,” said Flora Dabney, as if the two were interchangeable, which they certainly were in Bill’s mind, because he could not remember the details of that particular law class.

  “You want to sell the Home for Confederate Widows?” asked Bill.

  “Women,” Flora Dabney corrected him. “There are only eight of us widows and daughters left.”

  Bill did a rapid mental calculation. The Civil War had ended one hundred and twenty-something years ago. Surely the supply of widows and daughters must have run out. “How could there still be eight of you left after all these years?”

  “We are the daughters of men who fought in the War as boys and who married quite late in life. My father was fourteen when he ran off to join the Confederacy. My mother was his third wife, whom he married in 1920, when he was seventy and she was twenty-three. My memories of him are quite dim by now, of course. The only actual widow is—”

  “And the eight of you want to sell the home? Can you do that?”

  “Yes. The deed says we can. You see, the house was bequeathed to the female dependents of Confederate veterans by a Colonel Phillips. He was a Confederate colonel, you see, and the house used to be his. It dates from before the War.”

  Bill didn’t bother to ask Miss Dabney which war. As far as she was concerned, there hadn’t been another one. So the house was about a hundred and fifty years old. He’d have to go and take a look at it.

  “Colonel Phillips was a generous man,” Flora was saying. “But he was nobody’s fool. Of course when he was drawing up the terms of the gift, he realized that sooner or later there would be no more dependents to benefit from his bequest. So it says—after a lot of wherefores and suchlike lawyerly talk—that when the trustees of the house feel that it is no longer needed, they may dispose of the property as they see fit. And, young man, the trustees of the house are the residents themselves!”

  “And you want to sell it?”

  “Yes. As I said, the upkeep is high, and there is far too much space for us. Not to mention the stairs. We talked it over and decided that we’d like to go to a nice retirement home just outside of town, so we’d like to arrange for a private sale of the property.”

  “Doesn’t the foundation
—or whatever it is—have an attorney already?”

  Flora Dabney sighed prettily. “He passed away, poor thing. And he was only seventy.”

  “Surely a Realtor—”

  “No. We talked about that. Because the house is quite old and valuable, we decided that we could get a better price for it if we did not try to sell it locally.” She beamed at their collective cleverness. “So we thought we could have you run an ad in one of those papers up North. The New York Times, perhaps. And we’d see if we could get some wealthy Northerner to purchase it because it wouldn’t seem so expensive to him, house prices being what they are up there.”

  “You want to sell the Home to a Yankee?” gasped Bill.

  Flora Dabney favored him with a pitying smile. “Mr. MacPherson,” she said gently, “the War is over.”

  Unfortunately at the home of Bill’s parents, the war was far from over. Bill spent the rest of an uneventful afternoon after Flora Dabney’s departure listening to the sound of a phone not ringing—and dreading his evening dinner engagement: one final meal with Mother and Dad at the old homeplace, after which he would stay the night in order to help Dad move out in the morning.

  Without his legal assistance, Bill’s parents had come to the decision that Margaret MacPherson would keep the house. Doug MacPherson would move to an apartment within close commuting distance of his office. He was going to take some of the family furniture with him, but there was still some debate between them as to what would go and what would stay. Bill kept asking who was getting custody of his baby pictures and his Little League trophies, but his parents seemed unconcerned with these major issues, preferring to squabble over record albums and cookware. Really, he thought, there was no accounting for some people’s sense of values. They weren’t being exactly forthcoming about the cause of the breakup, either, and he hardly liked to press the matter, because he found it all hideously embarrassing. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know. For legal purposes they were attributing the estrangement to irreconcilable differences, which is legalspeak for “none of your business.” He knew one thing, though—it wasn’t a friendly divorce, if, indeed, such a thing exists.