If Tom and Jeff had had their way, they would have been back to the home of Silas Carter every day. However, General McClellan had landed his troops, and they were moving up the peninsula, straight for Richmond. Every available man was brought together by General Joe Johnston for the defense of the city, so the two young men were kept busy.
Leah complained one day to Sarah, “I don’t see why they won’t let Tom and Jeff come and see us—at least once in a while. Just the two of them won’t make any difference to the old army!”
Sarah looked up from the peas she was shelling, dropping them into a bowl in her lap. “I’ve never seen any people as serious as these, Leah. They know if they don’t stop General McClellan and the Northern army, the war will be over for them.” She slit one of the pea pods, slipped a finger in the gap, and the peas drummed into the bottom of the bowl. “In a way I wish it would be like that. All I can think of is that somewhere in that army our brother’s got a part. I don’t sleep well thinking about him.”
“And about Tom too, and Jeff.” Leah nodded. “I know what you mean.” She looked down at the peas in her own bowl. “I hate shelling peas. I think sometimes I’d rather dig a ditch.”
“You like to eat them well enough. You’re going to be fat as a pig if you keep on eating so much. You’re growing up to be a big girl anyway.”
Leah flushed. She was still self-conscious about her height. At thirteen she was already almost as tall as Sarah, who was seventeen. “Well, I may be a giant in height,” she said, “but I’ll never be fat. I’ll see to that!”
Later in the morning, a note came in the mail. It was addressed to Silas.
Their uncle opened it as soon as Leah handed it to him. He scanned the message quickly and said, “Well, you girls are going up in society it looks like.”
“What do you mean, Uncle Silas?”
“This is an invitation from Mrs. Mary Chesnut. She’s one of the social leaders in Richmond. Her husband is President Davis’s military adviser.” He scanned the note again. “She wants you and Sarah to come to a tea she’s having tomorrow afternoon.”
“But we don’t know her,” Leah said. “How would she know about us?”
“Oh, I’ve got a few friends high up, and I’ve told them—and I suppose they’ve told Mrs. Chesnut. She’s a very kind lady. Her husband and I did some business together more than once. So get your best dresses out because you’re just liable to run into anybody at her house—maybe even the president, or General Lee.”
“Not General Lee, I bet,” Leah said. “He’s out getting the soldiers ready for the battle. I’ll go tell Sarah.”
The two girls were excited about the Chesnuts’ tea. At 2:00 the next afternoon they went in a carriage at Silas’s insistence. The Chesnut home was a large, two-story house in one of the better sections of town. Carriages lined the street outside, and Leah said, “My gracious, it looks like everybody in town is here. I never saw such a crowd for a tea party.”
The two girls dismounted from the carriage and walked inside, where they were met by a tall, dark-haired lady, very attractive and with a warm smile.
“I’m Mary Chesnut, and you must be Silas Carter’s nieces.” She took their names and said, “Come now, let me introduce you around.”
The two girls soon had their heads swarming with names. The room was full of officers in ashgray uniforms with shiny brass buttons and black leather boots. It was not long before Sarah had attracted a small group of them around her. Her dark hair and dark eyes and attractive figure drew them like bees.
Mary Chesnut stopped beside Leah, who was sitting off to one side watching her sister. She said, “Your sister is very attractive. She’s going to have lots of admirers, I think. There are so many men and not enough ladies to go around.”
“I’d think they’d all be off getting ready for the battle.”
Mrs. Chesnut had a smooth forehead, but it wrinkled now with a distinct sign of worry. She touched one pearl earring. “Yes, there will be fighting soon, so my husband says.”
She spoke for a while of the battle that was to come, and Leah could see that this gracious lady was very concerned indeed.
Finally Mrs. Chesnut glanced again at Sarah, who had been taken over, it seemed, by a young captain. Mrs. Chesnut said with a smile, “It looks like your sister has made a conquest. That’s Captain Wesley Lyons. He’s the son of one of the wealthiest men in Virginia. Half the young women in Richmond, if not all, have set their cap for him.”
“He’s nice looking,” Leah admitted, taking in the young man’s tall form. Lyons had a wealth of brown hair that lay neatly on his head and a trim beard. “But I don’t think my sister would be very interested in him.”
Mrs. Chesnut gave Leah a curious smile. “Surely every young woman is interested in an attractive, wealthy young man. Why wouldn’t your sister be interested?”
Leah hesitated, then said, “She’s—she’s already interested in a young man.” When Mrs. Chesnut gave her an inquiring glance, Leah felt she was getting out of her depth. “But he’s joined the Confederate army, and we’re Union. My brother is in the Army of the Potomac.”
Mrs. Chesnut was a sensitive woman and said, “Oh, my dear! That must be very hard for you and for your sister. So many families are like that, some even here in Richmond—their sons and brothers have gone to fight for the Union. Such a time!”
* * *
In the meanwhile Sarah found herself besieged by the young captain. He was, she saw, accustomed to having his own way with young women, and she thought, My, he’s fine looking—but spoiled to the bone! Any man as rich and good looking as he is probably never heard a woman say no. But Captain Wesley Lyons is going to have to hear that—at least from me.
Lyons was balancing a small teacup on his knee as the two sat together. “You must allow me to show you around Richmond, Miss Carter. I’ve lived here most of my life, and if you’ve never been here there are many fine sights to see.”
Sarah smiled but said rather pointedly, “I understand there is a battle to be fought very soon. Won’t you be involved in that, Captain Lyons?”
“I wish you would call me Wesley,” he said. Then he shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose I’ll be involved. I’m working with the Quartermaster Corps right now.” He seemed defensive about that. “People make fun of us because we don’t fight on the front line, but if the soldiers didn’t get uniforms and guns and food, what fighting would they do?”
“I’m sure you do a fine job,” Sarah said. She avoided the issue of his coming to call, but finally by sheer perseverance he wore her down, and she agreed that he might come.
She was not too surprised when, the next day, Captain Lyons arrived and invited her to go for a drive around the streets of Richmond.
As she got ready, a thought came to Sarah. She was putting on her bonnet when suddenly she looked over at Leah, sitting beside her dressing table and chatting. “Leah, I want you to go with us.”
“Me! Why, he didn’t come to call on me, Sarah.”
“I know that.” Sarah adjusted the bonnet and looked at herself critically. “I don’t really want to see him, and perhaps having a pesky younger sister along will scare him off.” She came over and tousled Leah’s blonde hair. “I know how pesky you can be when you want to—so just outdo yourself this afternoon, will you? Make yourself absolutely obnoxious.”
Leah said indignantly, “I am not pesky, but just to show you, I will be today.”
Leah kept her word, to the captain’s sorrow. When they got into the carriage, she planted herself firmly between Captain Lyons and Sarah, then turned and winked at her sister. All afternoon she kept herself between the two, talking non-stop and driving the young captain crazy.
Leah enjoyed the outing because she enjoyed puncturing the ego of Captain Wesley Lyons. However, things ended on a depressing note.
They were driving down Elm Street when Sarah noticed a crowd filing into a large, red brick building. “What’s that, Captain?”
“Oh, nothing much,” he said. “Just a slave auction.”
Sarah gave Leah a sudden look, and somehow Leah knew what her sister was thinking. Both of them had grown up in a state that had slaves, but Pineville had fewer than most. In fact, there was strong Union sentiment in Pineville, and most slave owners had gotten rid of their slaves.
“Let’s go inside,” Leah said impulsively. “I’ve never seen a slave auction.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’d be interested. It’s not for little girls,” Lyons said pompously.
This, of course, made Leah more determined. She enlisted Sarah’s aid, and finally Captain Lyons shrugged and said, “All right, we can at least look inside.”
As they walked in, Leah saw a poster proclaiming that a firm named Johnson and Kelly was conducting a sale of Negroes. The room was large, perhaps fifty feet square. It had no furniture except for a few scattered benches and chairs. The whitewashed walls were about twelve feet high, and a pair of steep staircases led to the floor overhead. A single door at the back apparently opened to another room.
Leah had heard about slave auctions, of course. The abolitionists preached loudly about the evils of selling human beings, and she agreed with them, although she disliked some of their manners.
Now, as she looked around, she saw that there were two classes of people at the auction, and they might have belonged to separate worlds. Many men were dressed in dark suits and wore broad-brimmed hats and smoked so many cigars that the air was blue. The second group was the blacks, who were either standing along a wall or sitting on benches.
Leah looked closely at one young girl no older than she and saw the fear in her large brown eyes. Pity welled up in her, and she wondered, What would I be feeling if I were going to be sold and be made into somebody’s slave?
The room was noisy with the talk of the auctioneer, the sellers, and the buyers. At the front was a small, raised platform. As Leah watched, the auctioneer called up one of the black women, wearing a red dress with a white apron.
The auctioneer began to speak. “Now look here, gentlemen, this is a prime specimen. Only nineteen years old, never had a sick day. She’s healthy and ready to breed, so what am I offered?”
The bidding started at $1,500 but rose rapidly. The young woman was a mulatto—part white—and very pretty. She dropped her head as the bidding went on, and once a man stepped up on the platform and grasped her jaw. He forced her to open her mouth and examined her teeth. He ran his hand over her body and then stepped down and raised the bid.
The woman was sold for $4,200, and Sarah heard a man nearby say, “That’s Thomas from New Orleans. He buys all the pretty ones for his saloons there.”
Leah had a sickening feeling in her stomach, and she glanced at Sarah, who nodded.
They both stood it for a while longer, but then a mother was sold to one buyer and fought to keep her little girl with her. As the mother was cuffed into submission, the little girl was picked up bodily by a rough-looking man and carried out of the building, screaming.
Sarah said, “Take us out of here, Captain. I’ve had enough of this.”
When they were in the carriage, Sarah said, “I think I’d like to go home now.”
Captain Lyons gave her a surprised look. “Why? Aren’t you feeling well?”
Sarah hesitated, then said, “I’ve never seen a slave auction before. It—it’s very disturbing.”
“Now you must remember they’re not like us,” Lyons said. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently. “You can’t make anything out of a black but a slave. They don’t have souls, you know.”
“They do so!” Leah piped up. “I looked into that little girl’s eyes, and she was scared, just like I’d be.”
Lyons was obviously displeased. “Don’t go comparing yourself to them, Leah,” he said. “I tell you, they don’t know any better, and they’re happy enough as they are.”
Afterward when Sarah and Leah were alone in their room, they talked about it. “I can’t believe anyone could be as blind as that man. To say that those poor people don’t know any better. They know they’re slaves, all right. Did you see the hopelessness in their eyes?” Sarah spoke angrily.
“Well,” Leah said slowly, “I guess that’s partly what this war is all about. They talk about states’ rights—” she hesitated “—but I think most of our men are fighting to see that nobody belongs to anybody else.”