Celia Garth: A Novel (11 page)

Celia began to realize that she had never felt really close to anybody. As she stood between the warm sitting room and the chilly street, she felt that she was going out of Jimmy’s kind of life into her own kind, and she did not like the change.

Jimmy came into the hall, wearing a long blue cape and three-cornered hat. “After I’ve seen you home,” he said as they walked down Church Street, “I’ll stop at the office and put your necklace in my strongbox.”

They crossed Broad Street. Over at the east end where Broad Street met the Cooper River, they could see the great dark pile of the Exchange, and gray sea-gulls crossing the gray sky. Celia was remembering that ever since she had first met Jimmy she had thought there was something delightfully special about him, but she had not known what it was. Now she knew. Without being conscious of it, Jimmy showed the way he had been living all his life. That was what he had and she had not. But she still did not know what to call it.

They had fallen silent as they walked along. The street was nearly empty, for not many people took a Sunday stroll in such murky weather. Celia looked up at Jimmy. He smiled, and pushing his cape aside he drew her hand warmly into the bend of his elbow. As he did so, Celia knew what it was she had sensed when she went into that room. It was love. Not love for anybody in particular, just love. Jimmy was used to loving and being loved, and she was not. That was why she had felt lonesome.

They were nearing the shop. When the girls went out with their friends they were supposed to use the side door, so Jimmy and Celia walked along the side street and went up the steps to the door. The little hallway was empty, though they could hear the voices of the girls and their boy-friends from the back parlor. Closing the hall door behind him Jimmy spoke in an undertone.

“Now if anybody mentions the necklace, say you won’t discuss it without advice of counsel.”

“Counsel—that’s you?”

“That’s me.”

“Jimmy, I—I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Don’t try. I like doing it.”

“You’re grand. And Jimmy.”

“Yes?”

“Since I’m leaving tomorrow, I’d better give this back.” She took the rabbit’s foot from her pocket.

Jimmy seemed surprised. “Why give it back?”

“I shouldn’t take it out of town,” said Celia. “Anyway, it’s been a long time since you lent it to me.”

“Lent it? I thought I gave it to you.”

“Oh no you didn’t!”

“Well, I’m giving it to you now.”

“Oh but Jimmy—you’ve had it so long, and it matches the one on Rosco’s collar—”

“That one will be luck enough for Rosco and me both.” Taking her hand, he closed her fingers over the rabbit’s foot and held them firm. “After all, weren’t you born on a Friday the thirteenth?”

They smiled at each other intimately, as though the rabbit’s foot was an important secret between them. Celia was glad he had given it to her. It would be like having Jimmy with her while she was away.

“Thank you so much, so very much,” she said. Jimmy was still holding her hand with her fingers closed over the rabbit’s foot, and looking down at her with that intimate smile. Celia added, “I’m not sure how long Mrs. Lacy wants me to stay at Sea Garden. But for now, this is good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Jimmy, and then before she knew what he was doing, he had kissed her.

It was a kiss so light, so quick and yet so definite, that Celia started and caught her breath. In that same instant Jimmy put an arm around her and pulled her to him and kissed her again, and there was nothing quick or light about this one. In her amazement the bleak little hallway spun around her with the colors of paradise. She could not have told whether it was two seconds or ten minutes before she heard him say,

“Oh Celia, I know so many words—I can read Latin and I can speak French—but how does a man tell a girl in plain English that he loves her?”

Celia had wondered a thousand times what she would say in a moment like this, if she ever had one. And now that she had it, her throat closed up. Those tears that had been crowding her eyes all afternoon could be held back no longer and came tumbling down in the most idiotic fashion, but though she was crying she was laughing too, laughing softly and joyfully. She was astonished, she was speechless with the suddenness of what had happened. But it seemed that a thousand voices were singing in her heart, and what they told her was,

“This—this is what you’ve been missing!”

The thought lifted her on a warm cloud of happiness. She hid her face on Jimmy’s blue-caped shoulder while he held his arms around her and she felt him kiss her hair. But at length—again she had no idea how long it had been—she managed to look up and answer him.

“I don’t know how a man says it—I don’t know how a girl says it either—I’m so amazed I’m dizzy—but I love you too.”

And then, among all those words he knew, Jimmy found the right ones. Holding her head on his shoulder and stroking her hair, Jimmy made her understand that she was never going to be lonesome again. He had been trying for weeks to say this, he told her, but every time he tried he got scared. No, his mother didn’t know about it, nor Miles—did she think he’d tell anybody before he told her?

“But I had to tell you now,” he said, “because you’re going away. Celia, Sea Garden isn’t far—I’ll come up there, we’ll talk and make plans and do all the sensible things people have to do, but right now, I just wanted you to know.”

Celia drew back a little so she could look up at him. The hallway had grown dark, but she felt as if all the light on earth was shining out of her eyes.

Then all of a sudden she and Jimmy were reminded that they were not alone in the world.

At the far end of the hall a door opened. They jerked apart. Through the doorway came the thin beshawled figure of Miss Loring, a candle in one hand and a bell in the other. She set the candle on the hall table, and ringing the bell as she walked she came toward the front and opened the parlor door.

“Six o’clock, ladies,” she announced sharply. “Gentlemen, visiting hours are over.” She spoke over her shoulder to Jimmy. “Sunday callers leave at six, young man.”

Jimmy bowed. “Certainly, ma’am. I was just leaving.”

He opened the outside door and stepped through. Since he was so obedient Miss Loring paid him no more attention, but went into the parlor to hurry out the young men lingering there. From beyond the door Jimmy reached his long arm into the hall and drew Celia out on the top step by him, in the dark.

“Good night,” he whispered. “Darling.”

He kissed her again, a kiss that had to be hardly more than a touch because Miss Loring was about to send everybody else out upon them. Then Jimmy was down the steps and gone. With a little sobbing catch in her throat Celia ran down the steps too, and along the side street to Lamboll Street, just in time to see Jimmy passing a lantern, and then the end of his cloak swinging around the next corner.

For a moment she stood still. She felt as if a wind full of stars had swept around her. It had all happened so suddenly that she could not think. She was only feeling that right this minute she was happier than she had ever been before, and why hadn’t somebody told her it was like this to fall in love?

From high in the darkness she heard a musical whisper, the bells of St. Michael’s marking the hour. How beautiful it was, this sound of the bells. It was as if the city had a voice of its own, and was saying “God bless you.” The bells never seemed loud, yet you could hear them from end to end of town; when the wind was right you could even hear them out at sea.

And now within sound of the bells Jimmy had kissed her. Celia thought she would love the bells as long as she lived, and whenever she went away she would be homesick for them. She wished she were not going away tomorrow.

In the spire of St. Michael’s the beacon flashed on and lit up the bonny town beneath. As she turned to go indoors Celia felt gay and warm. What was it Vivian had said the other day?—“Don’t fall in love, Celia. It’s just asking for trouble.”

Now really, how stupid could an old woman get?

T
HEY WENT UP TO
Sea Garden on Herbert Lacy’s trim little schooner. It was a beautiful trip through the soft autumn haze, among the chains of sea islands along the coast. With Herbert and Vivian, Celia sat on deck in a folding chair, a blanket over her knees and a book in her hand, but she did not read much. She had her own delicious thoughts.

Early this morning, when they were about to step on board the schooner, Jimmy had come down to the wharf to say good-by. He shook hands with Herbert, he wished Vivian a pleasant trip; and then he snatched a moment to whisper to Celia, “What I’m really here for is to tell you again, I love you.”

Now Celia looked over the gray-blue water and the palmetto trees along the white beaches of the islands. She liked everything—the smart little boat and the salt air; the Negro crewmen, so expert that they never made a wrong turn in this tangle of water-paths; the lunch that the maids unpacked from hampers and served on deck. She had never dreamed how pleasant it could be to go from one place to another.

In the afternoon the men turned the boat into a little stream about ten miles south of the Santee River. They sailed between banks lined with moss-hung oaks and tall tupelo trees, till they came to a landing made of flat stones, from which a road led through the woods. Beside the landing, a bell hung from a crossbar between two uprights. Vivian closed her novel and Herbert his volume of Plato as one of the men scrambled ashore and pulled the bellrope. This told the folk at Sea Garden that the master and mistress were home.

Standing on deck, waiting for the carts that would take them to the big house, Celia felt as if she was about to enter an enchanted forest.

Sea Garden was so near the coast that sometimes you could smell a salt tang in the air. This was why Vivian had called it Sea Garden.

She had owned the place since she was a girl in her teens. Vivian’s family name was Pomeroy. From the earliest days of the colony the Pomeroys had been planters in the rich neighborhood of Goose Creek, where the family property still belonged to Vivian’s brother Dan. Since Dan had been heir to the plantation, Vivian’s father had provided that she should have an inheritance of her own: money, jewelry, and a building site in Charleston. Not many girls had such a dowry.

But Vivian had wanted land. Even then, before life had shown her how cruelly uncertain it could be, Vivian had sensed by some deep instinct that land was real, something you could count on. She begged her father to let her take part of her dowry and buy land.

As usual, Vivian got her way. This land was public property and she bought it cheap from the king’s administrators. She told them she had chosen it because she liked the quietness and the sharp whiffs from the sea. This was true, but the real reason was that Vivian had seen the fine tupelo trees along the river banks and she knew that tupelos grew to that size only in the richest soil. The king’s men did not know this. They were Britishers who had been given their fat jobs in America because they knew somebody at court, not because they knew anything about America.

Vivian loved Sea Garden. Whenever she married she would change her address to match her husband’s, but this was her real home. Through all the changes of her life—while she married five men and was four times widowed, bore six children and watched two of them die, while she was sick or well, happy or heartbroken—Sea Garden had been her place of refuge. Since Herbert’s retirement from charge of his own plantation they had lived here whenever they were not in town.

Set by a tiny stream, miles from the main road, Sea Garden was remote. You were not likely to come across it unless you knew it was there. Most of the property was still covered by forest, for the Lacys raised only what they used themselves. Thus they could leave the place in care of their Negro foreman, and go to Charleston—or in peaceful days to Europe—whenever they pleased.

Vivian had set the house on a little rise, in a grove of mighty oaks that had stood there for three hundred years. Because it was so far from everywhere she had built the house like a fortress, of cypress beams on a raised brick basement that had walls four feet thick. Like the town house, this one was not elaborate, but it had charm and comfort and security. Celia loved it at once.

Vivian kept her busy. In the mornings she sewed; in the afternoons she read aloud, or wrote letters, brief and arrow-sharp, at Vivian’s dictation. “Mrs. Miles Rand, Bellwood Plantation, parish of St. Thomas. My dear Audrey, No wonder you are tired of waiting. I know these nine months seem endless. But Nature takes her own time. You cannot hurry a tree, or a baby, or a hard boiled egg.”

When she had finished writing Celia went outdoors. As she walked under the trees, while the wind sent the leaves swirling around her and the sun fell on the ground like splashes of yellow wine, she wondered if anywhere on earth there was another such perfect place for a girl to be in love.

She did not keep her secret long. On Saturday of that same week Jimmy and Amos came riding up to Sea Garden, and while Marietta entertained Amos in the kitchen with cold ham and hot crackling-bread, Jimmy told Herbert and Vivian his news.

They were not surprised. Jimmy said his mother had not been surprised either. He had not realized he was so easy to see through, he added with a chuckle as he handed Celia a note his mother had written.

Celia felt a qualm. Mrs. Rand was a dear, but you never could tell how a man’s mother was going to react to things like this. While Vivian showed Jimmy to a room—she always had rooms ready for guests—Celia slipped into the library. Sitting on the floor by the hearth she held the page to the firelight.

The note was short. “My dear Celia, Jimmy has told me the good news. I am delighted that you are going to be one of us. Affectionately, Beatrice Rand.”

As she read it Celia had a sense of warmth and comfort that had nothing to do with the fire. She remembered the room she had been in last Sunday afternoon. And now she was going to belong there too. “One of us.” It sounded so sweet, so welcoming, as if the atmosphere of that room was reaching out to enclose her.