The next evening, Wes arrived almost at the same time that Uncle Madison arrived home from his office. Greeting Wes heartily, Uncle Madison invited him into the parlor. JoBeth hoped Wes wouldn’t bring up anything controversial and upset Uncle Madison. At least not until after supper. She knew Wes had determined to make clear his feelings about the war, and there was nothing she could do about that. She just wanted them to have a pleasant meal.
With a lingering glance at the two men, JoBeth went into the kitchen. Annie had asked for the evening off to visit her sick sister, so her mother and aunt were going to serve the dinner Annie had fixed ahead of time.
Johanna was busily spooning spiced peaches into small, cut-glass condiment dishes. Sniffing appreciatively the savory smells of baking ham and candied sweet potatoes, JoBeth asked, “What can I do to help?”
Her mother smiled at her. “You can get the extra silver servers out and fill the cream pitcher.”
Aunt Josie, her cheeks flushed from the heat, closed the oven door and turned from the stove. JoBeth looked at her aunt admiringly. Even in the kitchen, the woman managed to look elegant, not a hair out of place, sapphire drop earrings twinkling. Aunt Josie untied the strings of a blue cotton apron that covered her lace-trimmed flowered dress and asked, “Are Madison and Wes having a nice chat in the parlor?”
“Yes, ma’am,” JoBeth answered, sincerely hoping so.
Aunt Josie’s brow puckered slightly. “Hope they’re not arguin’.”
“No, ma’am.” JoBeth looked at her aunt warily. “Why should they be arguing?”
“Well, I’m sure it’s nothing to be fussed about. It’s just that I saw Alzada Spencer’s sister in town, and she told me she’d heard that Wesley was going back up north—that he’d refused his uncle’s offer to come into the law firm. That they had some bad kind of falling out. It’s probably nothing, just one of those rumors that fly around.”
JoBeth felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. How quickly word spread in Hillsboro! She held her breath as Aunt Josie continued.
“But then, everybody knows that Wayne Spencer’s got a hot temper, and”—she shrugged—“sometimes young men pick up ideas that don’t really fit into the lives they’re going to live after they graduate, but they like to test them out. Of course, some folks couldn’t figure out just why the Rutherfords let him go to Philadelphia to get his education. When there are several good colleges around here.”
“Well, his grandmother lives there, for one thing,” JoBeth began, but at her mother’s almost imperceptible head-shake, she halted.
“Well, you know Madison—he always feels he has to set a young person’s head straight,” Aunt Josie said. Picking up a quilted hot pad, she opened the oven again and peered into it. As she lifted the lid of the roasting pan, delicious clove-scented steam filled the air. “The ham’s done, and the sweet potatoes are just right,” she said with satisfaction. “Go tell the gentlemen they can come to the table, honey,” she directed JoBeth.
JoBeth left the kitchen and hurried down the hall. As she neared the parlor, she heard raised voices. In his best lawyerly tone, almost as though he were addressing a jury, Uncle Madison was saying, “But Wes, there’re North Carolina brigades starting up. Your friends, some of your schoolmates, chaps you’ve known all your life—couldn’t you see your way to joining up with these troops?”
JoBeth held her breath for Wes’s reply. There was a pause. Then he said, “No, sir, I couldn’t fight for slavery.”
Her stomach in knots, she moved closer, placing her head in the crack of the door in order to hear her uncle’s response. She knew her uncle and she was afraid. It was not long in coming.
“Well, Wesley, I’m sorry to hear this.” A pause, and then, “I’m sure you know that my wife and I set a great store by our niece, and it hasn’t escaped our notice that you and JoBeth have fond feelings for each other.” Uncle Madison cleared his throat before continuing. “I wouldn’t want to see her burdened by your decision and brought to divided loyalties and unhappiness.”
“No, sir. I wouldn’t want that, either,” Wes replied. “I do love JoBeth. Under other circumstances—I mean, if things weren’t so uncertain—I would ask you and her mother for the privilege, the honor, of asking her to marry me. I have no intention of bringing her any unhappiness.”
JoBeth pressed her hands tightly together. She didn’t know whether to tiptoe back to the kitchen and let Aunt Josie call them to dinner or to retrace her steps and then make some warning noise to let the men know she was approaching the parlor. As it turned out, Aunt Josie called from the dining room, “What’s keeping those men? Madison! You and Wesley come along while everything’s nice and hot.”
JoBeth dreaded the meal. However, when both her uncle and Wes joined them at the table, the conversation seemed pleasant enough. Everyone seemed to be making an effort to avoid controversy. As sensitive as JoBeth was, both to Wes and her uncle, she felt decidedly tense throughout the meal. JoBeth had the distinct feeling that the truce between her uncle and Wes was simply for courtesy’s sake. It seemed to her that when Wes said he must leave, Uncle Madison’s goodnight was untypically cool.
She walked out to the porch with Wes when he left. They stood for a minute at the top of the steps. She felt instinctively that Wes was about to tell her something she didn’t want to hear.
“Blakely and Will have already joined the Confederate Army. Uncle Wayne assumes I will, too.”
Surprised, she turned to him. Had he possibly changed his mind? Hope flared up. “So will you? Is that what you’ve decided?”
Wes shook his head. “No, of course not. I can’t. I couldn’t fight for something I think is wrong.” He clenched his hands in a double fist. “I don’t know whether I can even fight for what I believe is right.”
“Is that because—I mean, are your feelings, like everyone says, because you went to school up north?”
“Yes, that could be a part of it. It influenced my thinking. But it goes even deeper than that. Ever since I was young, even when I was a little boy, eight or nine, I had these feelings … about slavery, about folks owning other human beings. I couldn’t put it into words then. It was just an uneasiness that it was wrong—”
“I don’t think of Annie as a slave,” JoBeth protested. “She’s always been with us, as long as I can remember, but …” Her voice trailed off weakly.
“That’s just it, JoBeth. It’s a way of life we’ve all just accepted. Until now. Now people have to decide. Do what their conscience demands.”
“I know what you’ve told me the Quakers think about war, what your grandmother taught you about taking up arms.” She frowned, genuinely puzzled. “But in the summers, when you’re here, you go to our church. And they never say anything about slavery or about fighting. Everyone here feels it’s only honorable to defend yourself. I guess I just don’t understand. If it’s wrong to fight at all, why do you have to choose sides?”
“That’s the dilemma, JoBeth. I can’t answer for anyone else. It’s my own conscience I must answer to. My own belief. I never became a Quaker, although I attended their meetings when I was with my grandmother. Probably unconsciously absorbed their teachings.” He sighed. “That was when I was a child, JoBeth. Remember the Scripture ‘When I was a child, I thought as a child’—First Corinthians, thirteen, eleven? ‘I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man, I put away childish things.'” He paused. “Now, however, as a man with my own convictions about what is right or wrong, I have to choose.” He sighed again. “And I don’t think that the Union should be broken apart. I think it should be protected. Much as I hate the thought of fighting people I know and love, I have to make a choice and go with my own conscience.”
“You mean—”
“I’ll have to leave Hillsboro, JoBeth. Go back to Pennsylvania. Then I’ll—”
“Oh no, Wes!” Her voice sounded almost like a sob. “Please, isn’t there some other way?”
“I don’t see that there is, JoBeth.” Wes’s voice grew husky. “I can’t stay, feeling as I do, knowing how others will view my decision.”
“You’ve told your uncle, then?”
“Yes. Of course he’s furious. We had a terrible row. Aunt Alzeda went to bed with a terrible headache. The whole household is in an uproar. The sooner I can make arrangements to go, the better for everyone.” He gave a harsh laugh. “I’d better be gone before the two conquering heroes arrive back from Raleigh.”
“Blakely and Will?”
“Yes.” Wesley turned and drew JoBeth into his arms. “Oh, JoBeth, forgive me for what I’m doing to you.” His words were muffled against her hair as he drew her even closer.
She clung to him, her cheek pressed against the starched, ruffled shirt. This should be one of the happiest moments in my life, she thought. So why do I feel as if my heart is breaking?
Just then Aunt Josie came to the door, holding an oil lamp.
“Oh, is Wesley still here, JoBeth?” she asked, of course knowing he was. They broke apart guiltily. “My, what a lovely night. Looks as if a new moon is coming up,” Aunt Josie said. “Do give my regards to Alzeda, won’t you, Wes, dear?” Then to JoBeth she said, “It’s getting rather cool, isn’t it, JoBeth? Either get a shawl, dear, or come inside.”
There was no mistaking the subtle reprimand in her aunt’s voice.
“Yes, Auntie,” she replied, then whispered to Wes, “I guess I’d better go in.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow and let you know my plans,” Wes said.
“No, maybe it had better not be here. Let’s meet at the bridge instead. We can talk more freely there.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea. Tomorrow, then. Say, three o’clock,” he replied. Raising his voice slightly, he said, “Good night, Mrs. Cady. Thanks again for supper.” He started down the porch steps. JoBeth watched his tall figure walk through the gate and disappear into the shadowy night.
What tomorrow or the day after would bring, she had no idea. She had only a feeling of dread that her life was going to change drastically.
She’d had that same feeling once before, long ago.
Even at age seven, JoBeth had been old enough to remember the day of her father’s funeral clearly. As they lowered the simple pine coffin into the ground her father had loved all his life, Reverend Tomlin, his voice breaking as he spoke the words, read from Matthew 25:34.
“’Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was sick and ye visited me. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, ye did it unto me.’”
JoBeth had understood how much Ross Davison had been beloved by the members of the mountain community that he had served so faithfully for so many years. With no thought to his own comfort, he had traveled the hills in any kind of weather to bring aid to the sick, treating injuries and all sorts of illnesses.
His dedication had been unquestioned. At great risk to his own health and safety, he had given generously of his skill, his knowledge, his determination, and it was in treating a dangerous and deadly disease that he had at last succumbed himself.
But what JoBeth hadn’t fully understood was why they had to leave Millscreek Gap.
She and her five-year-old brother, Shelby, had listened while Johanna explained that they were going down to live in Hillsboro with their mother’s relatives. All JoBeth really heard was “leaving the mountains.” But why must they leave? she had asked stubbornly. Why couldn’t she stay with Granny Eliza?
“Johanna Elizabeth,” her mother had said sternly. “You must not complain and whine and carry on like this. Your daddy is gone—we can’t stay alone up in the mountains. You and Shelby have to go to school. That’s what your father would have wanted. I must make a living there for us. Aunt Josie and Uncle Madison have been kind enough to offer us a home, and we should be grateful I will work, making quilts to sell, in order to give us money enough to be independent—but Shelby must have his chance. A man, nowadays, needs to be educated. Maybe he’ll become a doctor like your daddy, or a lawyer like Uncle Madison … but he’s got to have his opportunity. This is the only way I could make sure that he does.”
JoBeth hadn’t said any more. But it was with a sense of hopeless loss that she helped pack up their belongings, said good-bye to her beloved grandmother and to her mountain cousins, climbed up on the wagon seat alongside her mother—with Shelby wedged in between them—and started the torturous trip down the narrow, winding road to Hillsboro.
“Will we stay at Holly Grove?” she had asked once they came into town.
“No, honey. Grandmother Shelby lives in Charleston with Aunt Cissy now. Our cousins Harvel and Marilee live at Holly Grove these days. We’ll be going to the Willows, to the Cadys’ house.”
JoBeth had nodded, not really sure if she knew just who the Cadys were. Her mother had so many “town kin,” so many aunts and cousins, that JoBeth had found it hard to keep them straight when they came down to visit. That hadn’t been often. In winter the mountain roads were impassable, and in the summers—well, there was always so much to do on the long summer days.
As they finally came to a stop in front of a large, white, pillared house just at dusk, JoBeth’s memory had been stirred. She had suddenly remembered that Aunt Johanna Cady was the “fussy” one of her mother’s aunties. Just then she had felt a sharp sense of loss over her father’s death. She had recalled his deep, kind voice, the way he would swing her up in front of him onto his saddle, cuddling her in his strong arms, leaning down and asking affectionately, “Well now, Miss Johanna Elizabeth, what kind of a day did you have?” Tears came stinging into her eyes. It was at that moment, in some indescribable way, that she knew in her child’s heart that her life was forever changed.
Now, remembering that, JoBeth felt again the sensation of being on a road whose end she could not see.
Wes had warned her, It’s not that simple. But she was yet to discover the full price of their love, their commitment to each other.