Do not be silent at my tears, for I am a stranger—Psalm 39:4
How shall we sing—in a strange land?—Psalm 137:4
DAVIDA’S EYES threatened to overflow. The farther they rode out from the Mayfield train depot, the lower her spirits plunged. They passed deep meadows and vast pasturelands where horses grazed, looking up indifferently as the carriage went rumbling along the country road. In the distance she could see the ridge of blue hills that seemed to enclose her, shutting off any possibility of escape.
Suppressing a shudder, she glanced at Jonathan to see if he had noticed. But her husband was leaning forward in his seat, eagerly looking out the carriage windows.
A feeling of desolation crushed Davida. How could Jonathan be so happy when she was so miserable? And why didn’t he sense her misery?
The shock of leaving her beloved home and dear Papa had only begun to penetrate, and she was not prepared for the crush of reality that suddenly hit her. Here she was, far from everything she knew. Beautiful as it was, this landscape was unfamiliar, alien. She ached with the effort of concealing the grief that swept over her, something she could not share with her husband. Worst of all was the possibility that she had made a terrible mistake in agreeing to come to Virginia so that Jonathan could take over his family’s plantation.
She winked back the tears. Tears would not console her; they would only make matters worse. Jonathan would be upset, would not understand. Besides, had she not promised to honor and obey him?
The words of the vows they had so recently repeated came to mind, along with the benediction that had been pronounced over them: “May God grant that you two live in such mutual harmony and full sympathy with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with united hearts glorify Him in all you do in your married life.”
A wife was supposed to be submissive, sweet-spirited. A wife was not to argue or show anger. But she and Jonathan were not in “mutual harmony” nor in “full sympathy” with one another, nor had their hearts been united in this decision!
She recalled Reverend Nevins’ also saying: “In marriage there will be sacrifices you will be called upon to make.” But she had not imagined such sacrifices would include moving hundreds of miles away from family and friends to an isolated country estate!
She had not wanted to leave the pretty little house Papa had built for them right next door to the house where Davida had grown up, where she could run across the lawn any time to see him or to borrow a recipe from Mrs. Glendon, their longtime housekeeper, or where she could simply cross the common to visit with any one of her girl friends from childhood.
Wasn’t there something else the minister had said? Davida tried to remember. “Only love can make it easy, perfect love can make it joy.” Well, there was no question about her love for Jonathan. Davida loved him so much that it hurt!
“I think we’re almost there!” Jonathan exclaimed. “I believe I’m beginning to recognize the road where we turn off. Yes, I remember! Darling, we’re nearly there! Montclair!!”
Davida turned her head to look at him. His face was glowing, and he was smiling. How handsome he was, how much she loved him.
Maybe love would be enough. Maybe love made everything possible. She certainly couldn’t change anything now. She had made her choice and married Jonathan Montrose. She had assured him he was all she wanted, all she would ever want, and when she had said it, she had believed it. Desperately she told herself, I must believe it.
Davida leaned forward and kissed him softly on his mouth. “Oh, Jonathan, I love you.”
Davida took her first tour of Montclair, guided by a rapturous Jonathan, who saw everything through the happy haze of a long-delayed homecoming. Later, with all the instincts of a fastidious Yankee housewife, she made a second, more thorough, inspection of the house alone. This time she made the frustrating discovery that the mansion, for all its splendor, had suffered from standing empty for the past eighteen months.
While the Bondurants had been living in South Carolina and she and Jonathan were on their wedding trip, Montclair had stood unoccupied and unattended. In spite of the coverings, the furniture was thick with dust, and in all the vast rooms, unheated for months by the daily warmth of damp-chasing fires, the baseboards and ceiling moldings had collected mildew.
Davida realized a place this size needed a number of servants to keep things in good order, and the fact that it was she who would have to hire them and train them, if the work was to be done properly, was daunting.
She thought wistfully of the pretty little cottage her father had so lovingly built for them in the hopes of keeping her close by—of the small, neat rooms, the windows unshadowed by foreboding giant trees that barred the sunlight from pouring in, the tidy lawn bordered by flower beds—which was all that then separated her from her darling Papa.
Always striving to be the “ideal wife,” Davida hid her heartbreak. She wished she could share Jonathan’s obvious delight in being back in Virginia, but much as she tried to pretend, it was impossible.
So in their first year of marriage, secrets were kept out of love and out of the fear of causing pain to the other—the first link forged in a chain that would build through the years to separate them.
He shall return to the days
of his youth—Job 33:25
Leaving Davida standing in the middle of the front hall to direct the draymen carrying in the crates, boxes and trunks from Milford, Jonathan left quietly by a side door. He walked through the boxwood hedged herb garden, past the stables, out along the meadow, and found the hillside path that led to the Montrose family graveyard.
Pushing aside the scrolled black iron gate, he entered the burial grounds of generations of his ancestors. With a sense of reverence he searched among the headstones, pausing at one or two to read the epitaphs chisled on them, until at last he found the name he was searching for. In the shadow of the brooding stone angel, he read:
ROSE MEREDITH MONTROSE
1839-1862
Beloved Wife of Malcolm,
Mother of Jonathan
“Love Is As Strong As Death”
As he read that name, Jonathan felt the grip of strong emotion for the mother whom he could not remember. In that moment he experienced the embracing love and tenderness she could no longer bestow. How hard it must have been for her when she realized she was dying to know she was leaving her child.
From the portraits of his mother—the one at his grandfather Meredith’s house in Massachusetts of Rose as a radiant bride and the other, hanging in the stairwell at Montclair, of her as a young mother with her child leaning on her knee—himself—Jonathan knew what Rose had looked like. He had often gazed on that face in a kind of awed adoration, studying its contours, its expression, the dark, thoughtful eyes. For him, she would always be not only beautiful, but also forever young.
As fragile as her appearance seemed, however, the things Jonathan knew and admired most about his mother were Rose’s strength and courage.
Looking down at her grave, Jonathan realized, perhaps for the first time, that in spite of the two women—Aunt Garnet Devlin and Aunt Frances Meredith—who had tried to substitute the maternal love fate had deprived him of so early, his life had lacked something vital in not knowing his own mother.
Jonathan knelt in the soft grass beside the tomb and wept. It was the first time he remembered weeping for the lovely young woman who had given him life. He had been too young when she died to fully perceive what had happened. Later, the events of his life as he grew up in much different surroundings, had gradually dimmed his memory of the Virginia home where he had been born and lived until he was five years old.
Jonathan did not know how long he stayed there lost in fond thoughts and memories, but the sun was slanting through the maple trees around the fence of the cemetery when he got up from his knees and started down the hillside back to the house.
As he neared Montclair, he could see first the double chimneys at both ends of the house, then the slate roof, and finally the whole house came into view along with its sculptured gardens, boxwood hedges, and the long line of elms facing each other along the winding drive.
“Montclair,” he said softly to himself.
A house that descends from generation to generation through a single family begins to have a certain air about it, he thought. Except for the few years it had belonged to Bondurant, Montclair had retained its continuity, its affiliation with the other great James River plantation houses dating back to original King’s grants of the last century.
Now it belonged to him and Davida, who had her own strange connection with the Montrose family.
Jonathan came through the orchard to the front and started up the steps of the house, thinking how little aware most people are at the time they make them, how such decisions affect our destinies and those who come after us.