Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule Page 2

  “You got beautiful hair,” said Jule patiently, her knowing glance reminding Julia of the many times she had enumerated her mistress’s beauties to bolster her confidence. “You got such perfect hands too, so small and pretty and perfectly shaped. Your shoulders and neck look like they been carved out of marble, and your skin— What’s the word the missus used last time you went stomping around moaning about your looks?”

  “Luminous,” Julia said, somewhat grudgingly. “But she’s my mother. She has to say those sorts of things.”

  “Your mamma never told a lie in her life.”

  “No,” Julia admitted, “I’m sure she never has. But I wasn’t stomping about or moaning. I’m not pretty enough to be that vain. I know I’m the plainest of the Dent sisters. Everyone thinks so.”

  “I’ve never heard anyone call you plain.” Jule arranged a sprig of jasmine in Julia’s hair and stepped back to study the effect. “Except you, of course. You know what I hear people say?”

  Julia’s heart thumped. She knew people spoke too freely in front of the servants, imagining them as insensible as the furniture or the pictures on the walls. She had made that mistake herself. “I’m almost afraid to know. Perhaps you shouldn’t tell me.”

  “They say you the best singer and the best dancer of you and Nell and Emma. They say you the kindest, most generous, and most amiable of the Dent girls too.”

  “Do they?”

  “They do, and they also say you got beautiful hair.” Jule tucked one last loose strand into Julia’s chignon and stepped back, satisfied. “Thanks in no small part to me, if I do say so myself.”

  That compliment, at least, rang with truth. Rising, Julia thanked Jule and hurried downstairs to meet Nell. “We mustn’t be too downcast,” Nell warned as they mounted their horses. “We don’t want to give the officers an unhappy memory to carry off to war.”

  Julia nodded and resolved to be as cheerful as Nell, or at least to seem so. At sixteen, the second eldest of the Dent sisters was a great beauty, with merry brown eyes that hinted at suppressed laughter and a mass of glossy golden ringlets that had won her the nickname “the Maid of Athens” from her many admirers. Their youngest sister, Emma, and their four elder brothers rounded out the Dent family.

  Julia’s heart stirred with increasing anxiety as they approached the camp, surrounded by white fences and set imposingly upon a hill, with a high ridge spiked with tall pines in the distance beyond. After the guard waved them through the gate, Julia dismounted, scanning the men’s faces for the one she liked best, but her poor vision thwarted her and she dared not squint too much in case he was watching.

  Nell anticipated her quandary. “I don’t see him,” she said, linking arms with her elder sister.

  “I’m not sure who you mean,” replied Julia, feigning indifference as they strolled toward the nearest group of officers. Nell merely laughed and patted her arm knowingly.

  As they made the rounds of the camp and bade fond farewells to their favorite officers, now and then Julia would observe a soldier and a young lady stroll a discreet distance away from the others to exchange wistful good-byes in as much seclusion as decorum permitted. Several times she saw the promising glint of sunlight upon metal as a ring was offered and, more often than not, blushingly but charmingly refused. The scenes would have been sweet if they had not been so painfully reminiscent of her last parting with Lieutenant Grant. He had been so disappointed, though he had borne her demurral stoically. If she had known the Fourth Infantry was going to be sent away, perhaps she would have answered differently—but how could she have given him any other reply?

  “There’s Cousin James,” Nell said, nodding toward a trio of lieutenants descending the stairs of the piazza. Even Julia with her poor vision recognized their distant cousin James Longstreet, smartly attired in his dress uniform and surrounded by accoutrements of the martial life. She knew his companions too—Richard Garnett and Robert Hazlitt, frequent and welcome guests at White Haven.

  James’s face lit up with a smile when he spotted them. “My dear cousins,” he exclaimed, hurrying to meet them and kissing each sister quickly on the cheek. “How good of you to come out to bid us one last farewell.”

  “Mercy,” said Julia, unable to suppress a shudder. “You make it sound so final.”

  “What Longstreet means is, ‘Good-bye, until we meet again,’” amended Lieutenant Garnett.

  “Much better,” said Nell, smiling so winsomely in return that a faint flush rose in the lieutenant’s cheeks. “We will miss all of you very much.”

  “Do you know where we might find Lieutenant Grant?” Julia asked.

  “I’m sorry, cousin, but he isn’t here,” said James. “He’s still on leave visiting his family in Ohio. Didn’t you know? He told me he meant to pay his respects at White Haven before he left.”

  “And he did,” Julia quickly replied, “but that was before your new orders came. I assumed that his leave would be cut short.” Heart sinking, she looked from her cousin to his companions in turn and saw regret on each of their faces. “Won’t he return before you go south?”

  “If Lieutenant Grant hasn’t come to see you within a week from Saturday,” Lieutenant Hazlitt said, “you should assume that he’s gone down the Mississippi to meet us. He won’t be at Jefferson Barracks again.”

  “Of course,” Julia murmured, flinching from his unwitting, careless cruelty. Nodding graciously to the gentlemen, the sisters strolled off—or rather, Nell supported Julia on her arm and steered her away.

  “I never should have refused his ring,” Julia murmured tearfully when no one else could overhear.

  “You couldn’t have accepted it,” Nell reminded her. “You know that’s so.”

  And Julia did, but her heart broke all the same.

  • • •

  In a reluctant parting from the gallant officers, the sisters rode away, waving their handkerchiefs in a lingering farewell until the forest closed around them. At White Haven, Julia curled up on the sofa with Nell’s comforting arm about her shoulders and allowed her façade of serenity to fall.

  How could Lieutenant Grant’s absence have rendered her so unhappy, when she had known him only a scant few months, when she had never thought of him as more than a friend until that moment on the piazza less than two weeks before?

  She had known of Lieutenant Grant from her brother’s letters, of course, but they had offered only the barest sketch of him. Frederick, the third eldest of her four brothers, had befriended Ulysses Grant at West Point, where he had impressed his fellow cadets and instructors alike with his brilliant horsemanship. Frederick had wryly observed that in every other subject except mathematics, his friend had failed to achieve distinction, neglecting his studies but doing well enough in his recitations to get by. He had little patience for petty rules and regulations, and even less for drills, parades, and pompous ceremonies. The demerits he had accumulated were for minor infractions, but the sheer weight of their numbers dragged his class ranking below what Frederick loyally asserted was his true measure as a soldier.

  As the most accomplished horseman at West Point, Lieutenant Grant had hoped to be assigned to the cavalry, but after graduating an unremarkable twenty-first in a class of thirty-nine, he was denied his first choice. Instead he had been assigned to the infantry, which would have been a complete disappointment except that he would join Frederick at Jefferson Barracks. But even that silver lining had quickly tarnished; before Lieutenant Grant arrived, Frederick’s regiment had been ordered to Fort Towson in Indian Territory. “Would you make my friend welcome at White Haven?” Frederick had written home from the frontier outpost. “His family was kind to me when I visited them in Ohio. I would like to repay the favor.”

  Soon the lieutenant was visiting White Haven often, sometimes twice a week, or so Julia learned from her mother’s and sisters’ letters. After finishing her last sch
ool term, she had remained in St. Louis at the gracious mansion of her father’s cousin Mrs. John O’Fallon, the wife of a Kentuckian who had earned a fortune in railroads and real estate. Mrs. O’Fallon—worldly, elegant, and greatly admired for her charitable works—had taken the shy young Julia under her wing, polishing her social graces and introducing her into the same privileged society in which her own daughter, Caroline, dwelt. There Julia had attracted the eye of a wealthy beau, but his smooth manners, extravagant compliments, and abundant gifts of flowers overwhelmed rather than charmed her.

  “He’s gonna ask you to marry him,” Jule warned one evening as she helped Julia dress for an evening at the concert hall. “If not tonight, then soon.”

  Julia pressed a trembling hand to her waist. “Oh, heavens, please let it not be tonight.”

  “Tell him you don’t want to marry him.”

  “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.” Julia sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “I don’t want to disappoint Mrs. O’Fallon. It’s a fortuitous match, and Papa approves, and she’s worked so hard to arrange it.”

  Jule regarded her skeptically, one hand resting on her hip. “You’d promise to stay with a man you don’t love for the rest of your life just so you won’t make other people feel bad?”

  Julia knotted her fingers together in her lap. “When you say it like that, it sounds foolish.”

  “It sounds foolish because it is.” Shaking her head, Jule pulled Julia to her feet so she could adjust her sash. “What a shame to watch you waste your choice on someone you don’t love. Don’t you know how lucky you are, to be able to choose? You can wait for love to come along.”

  “I can’t wait forever.”

  Jule sighed and pulled the sash tighter. “You can choose,” she repeated. “I can’t believe you’d throw that away on that empty-headed peacock. I wouldn’t, but then again, I’ll never get the chance.”

  The rebuke stung. “Jule—”

  “At least he’s rich.” Jule relented, loosening the sash a trifle. “You may be unhappy, but you’ll be comfortable.”

  Jule’s words lingered in Julia’s thoughts as the days passed and her suitor became more urgently attentive. Finally, Julia confessed her unhappiness to Mrs. O’Fallon, who kindly sent her home to White Haven, where Julia—and Jule too, judging by her air of satisfaction—was all too happy to go.

  Within a few days of her homecoming, Julia met Lieutenant Grant.

  Her youngest sister, eight-year-old Emma, was proud to have met him first, and her letters had fairly gushed with admiration. “His cheeks are round and plump and rosy,” she had praised, so lavishly that Julia imagined her young sister swooning upon a fainting couch. “His hair is fine and brown, very thick and wavy. His eyes are a clear blue, and always full of light. His features are regular, very pleasing and attractive, and his figure is so slender, so well formed and graceful that to me he looks like a young prince.”

  When Julia saw him for the first time, making his way up the zigzag path to White Haven on horseback, she was struck by the accuracy of Emma’s observations. But as she welcomed him, and as she came to know him better in subsequent visits, she discovered other admirable qualities her innocent sister had missed. The blue eyes Emma had admired were contemplative and kind, and they fixed upon Julia with earnest curiosity. His quiet, composed manner was soothing and restful after the breezy boastfulness of her St. Louis suitor. His muscular hands held a horse’s reins with strength and certainty, and he rode with a natural grace and power that Julia, an accomplished horsewoman herself, could not fail to admire.

  “Lieutenant Grant used to be content to call on us only twice a week,” Julia’s mother remarked one afternoon as they tended her lavish flower garden, regarded as the most beautiful in the Gravois Creek settlement. “But since you’ve returned home, he visits nearly every day.”

  Julia had bent over a gardenia bush and busied herself with the pruning shears to disguise the color rising in her cheeks. She had not noticed an increase in Lieutenant Grant’s visits, which always seemed too brief and too far apart for her liking. He did not share her fondness for music and dancing, but they both delighted in long horseback rides through the Missouri countryside, through shady groves where trailing vines and tall ferns flourished, and along the creeks, which sparkled like silver as they flowed to the Mississippi. Usually the lieutenant would return to Jefferson Barracks after supper, but sometimes he spent the night, and on those occasions he and Julia would rise early and race before breakfast, flying over rolling hills softly blanketed by morning mists. Breathless and happy, Julia enjoyed the pounding of the horses’ hooves and her own heart and the sight of Lieutenant Grant leaning forward in his saddle, his often stubborn mouth breaking open in a grin, his blue eyes shining, his thick, ruddy hair tousled above a broad forehead. She basked in his unspoken admiration as he helped her alight from her mare, and he solicitously escorted her when she, an aspiring botanist, carried a magnifying glass and shears and vials off the well-worn trails into the underbrush in search of an intriguing new specimen or a particularly lovely flower. On warmer, sunnier days they might take their ease in a patch of soft grass near the creek, and while Julia examined her cuttings, Lieutenant Grant would read to her from Sir Walter Scott or Robert Burns. He was delightful company, despite his objections to slavery and his respectful disagreement with her father on almost every conceivable political issue. But Lieutenant Grant and Papa got along affably when the subject was farming, and Mamma approved of his common sense, diligent ways, and the temperate manner in which he discussed politics with her irascible, opinionated husband.

  Julia had looked forward to many more swift, invigorating rides and cozy family suppers with the lieutenant, so she was sorely disappointed when, upon his arrival one afternoon in late April, he explained that he would be taking a three-week furlough to visit his family in Ohio. “I believe war with Mexico is coming,” he told Julia later as they sat alone on the broad piazza after supper, as the sun declined toward the horizon and the moment of his departure too swiftly approached. “I want to say good-bye to my parents and my brothers and sisters before I go.”

  “Of course you must,” Julia said, unable to keep a tremor of apprehension from her voice.

  “Oh, don’t worry about me.” He rested his elbows on his knees and studied her expression, which he seemed able to read all too well. “I won’t get hurt. I’ll be back, as whole and sound as when I left.”

  “Not with camp food rather than Annie’s delicious cooking to sustain you, you won’t,” she teased. Their cook, rightly proud of her exceptional skills in the kitchen, often declared that the lieutenant was too skinny and ought to eat more, even though he rarely failed to clean his plate of whatever delicious morsels she placed before him. “I know you won’t be injured or—or worse. I know you’ll come back safely.”

  He peered at her, curious. “You sound awfully certain.”

  “I am.” As she spoke, a familiar, uncannily powerful sensation swept over her, and she knew that she was right. Since childhood, whenever she experienced that particular, peculiar feeling, or woke from a strangely vivid dream, she knew that whatever she had glimpsed or felt would come to pass. Jule believed that Julia had the gift of prophecy, but while Julia would never make such a boastful claim, she and her family had learned to trust her intuition.

  But her gift often eluded her at the most critical moments, rendering her utterly caught by surprise.

  “I won’t always be riding off into danger,” Lieutenant Grant told her seriously, sitting back in his chair. “You know I have no real affection for military life.”

  “I know,” said Julia, amused by the understatement. He loathed the routine of camp and the preponderance of petty regulations, and even merry military music fell like a noisy clanging of tin pans and blaring whistles upon his ear. Instead he hoped for a career as a mathematics professor, and in the evenin
gs in the barracks, he reviewed his West Point courses to prepare himself. He had applied for a post as an assistant professor at the military academy, and the head of the mathematics department had promised him first consideration when a vacancy next appeared.

  “It would be a good living,” he went on, and when Julia nodded, he hesitated, turned his West Point ring about his finger, then suddenly removed it and held it out to her. “Would you not wear this?”

  For a moment Julia froze, staring at the golden band on his palm. “Oh, no, I couldn’t,” she exclaimed, shrinking back into her chair. Once, several weeks before, when they had been walking their horses on a sunny bank of Gravois Creek, he had idly remarked that if he ever gave his school ring to a lady, he would give it as an engagement ring.

  “Why not?”

  “Mamma would never approve of me accepting such a gift from a gentleman.”

  He regarded her for a moment, clearly perplexed and disappointed. “All right, then,” he said, returning the ring to his own finger. Julia was too mortified to speak, so they sat in silence, Julia with her gaze fixed on her hands clasped in her lap, the lieutenant studying the poplar and locust trees at the garden’s edge.

  Then he stood. “I must bid you farewell now,” he said gruffly, avoiding her gaze.

  “Good-bye,” she replied softly. “Safe travels.”

  “Will you think of me while I’m away?”

  “Of course,” she replied, surprised that he needed to ask. “I’ll think of you and pray for your safekeeping every day, as I do for my own dear brother.”

  To her astonishment, he winced. It was not until after he rode away that she realized he had hoped she would say that she thought of him as someone even more dear than a brother.