All the following week, the hints, the innuendoes, and the inferences from both Aunt Josie and Uncle Madison began to mount. JoBeth assumed that Curtis’s supposed proposal had been circulated among the close-knit family. She was sure the consensus was that she had best not summarily dismiss the courting of such a gallant young man. It was as if the combined family were holding its breath and waiting for her to make the announcement.
JoBeth simmered under the covert glances sent her way. She could just imagine the discussions about her that were going on within the family circle. While they held an idealized image of Curtis, they seemed to have forgotten all Wes’s fine, brave qualities—his integrity, his courage. What hurt her the most was the fact that Wes had grown up in this town. They had known him since he was a little boy. They knew his parents as friends. Wes had often been a guest in all their homes, and now they had all turned against him in favor of someone they had just met. And only because Curtis wore the right uniform! Finally JoBeth reached the end of her tether. She went to her mother and told her about Curtis’s proposal.
“Of course, I told him I was pledged to another. I don’t see why Aunt Josie and Uncle Madison presume I could forget Wes like that.” JoBeth snapped her fingers. “They want me to be engaged to someone like Curtis, for their own sakes. So they won’t be embarrassed any longer by a niece promised to a Yankee sympathizer. I don’t think they even realize that Wes has joined the Union Army!” She got up from the chair on which she had been perched near her mother’s quilting frame and began to pace. “No matter what they want, I am in love with Wes, pledged to him! Nothing or no one, no matter how charming or attractive or eligible in their opinion, will change that. I wish they’d stop insinuating otherwise.”
“Do you want me to speak to them, darling?” Johanna asked sympathetically.
“Would you, Mama? Please? I’m afraid I’d just get defensive and get into an argument.” JoBeth sighed. “I love Aunt Josie and Uncle Madison. I don’t want this to cause any more misunderstanding.”
Since Wes’s departure, there had been an unspoken rule in the Cady household never to mention him. It was a rule that no one had yet disobeyed.
That evening at dinner, JoBeth guessed that her mother had broken the rule. Her aunt and uncle’s attitude spoke volumes. There was an unnatural stiffness in their very postures. JoBeth could not only feel the disapproval but see it in her uncle’s face. Aunt Cady regarded her with hardly concealed impatience, her mouth pressed as though she were trying to keep from speaking her mind about JoBeth’s stubborn and distressing stand.
Uncle Madison never could keep from expressing himself on any subject for long, and before the meal was half over, he addressed himself directly to JoBeth.
“I understand you turned Curtis Channing down, young lady.” Uncle Madison’s tone was bitter, implying that he was a man who felt he had been greatly wronged. “In my opinion, that was a very rash and unwise decision. You would do well to reconsider that refusal. A finer specimen of an upstanding Southern gentleman it has not been my pleasure to meet. And from what Blakely tells me, a fine officer as well, admired by his comrades and well-thought-of by his superiors. I understand he will probably make captain before long—you should be proud that such a man has asked you to be his wife.”
It was too much. After all, Wes had been welcome here since he was a little boy. He had sat at this very dinner table, had brought flowers and his gracious manners to her aunt and mother. Yet now he had become anathema, as though he had never even existed.
“Yes, indeed.” Uncle Madison was waxing eloquent as to Curtis’s qualities. “That young man is certainly an outstanding example of what is best in a Confederate officer—”
But this time he got no further. JoBeth could stand no more, and she turned furiously toward her uncle and interrupted, “Curtis Channing doesn’t have the remotest idea what the war is all about—or even what he’s fighting for.”
At first, Uncle Madison looked stunned at this startling outburst.
Then his face reddened and he banged his fist on the table. “Well, he damn well knows what’s the right side to be fighting for!”
At this, tears threatening, JoBeth flung down her napkin and jumped up from the table and ran from the room.
JoBeth’s outburst at the dinner table that night ushered in a dreadful period of strained relations with her aunt and uncle. Uncle Madison maintained a dignified silence as he came and went, and he kept his contact with his niece to a minimum. Aunt Josie fluttered between her husband and niece, begging them both to relent and resume their former affectionate relationship.
Both were stubborn. At last Johanna intervened with her daughter, saying it was she who should apologize. Uncle Madison had been like a father to her all these years, she reminded JoBeth, and she should honor and respect him, no matter their differences. JoBeth, knowing she had been wrong to react as she did, finally yielded. She went to her uncle one evening, upon his return from his office, and asked his forgiveness. Wes was not mentioned.
“We’ll say no more about it, my dear,” was Uncle Madison’s stiff rejoinder. After that the household seemed to regain its balance. However, under the surface, all knew that things might never be the same again.