Anything But Civil. Anna Loan-Wilsey
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Finch suggested after several minutes of us standing in the hall. Sir Arthur was already discussing his newest project with Lieutenant Triggs and, as usual, had forgotten all about his guests’ comfort.
“Of course, of course. I’ll meet you in the library when you’re ready.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Sir Arthur, I’m in no need of a break. After hours on the train, I’m like a private who’s been flicking weevils into the fire just for something to do. I’m intrigued by your new book and would relish some stimulating conversation.” Sir Arthur’s eyes lit up. I could see why they had continued their friendship. “If that’s all right with you, darling?” Lieutenant Triggs said to his wife.
“Yes, but I think I will lie down.”
“Hattie, see to anything Mrs. Triggs may need,” Sir Arthur said as the lieutenant kissed his wife on the cheek. The two men began their conversation where they’d left off and walked toward the library, us women completely forgotten. William picked up Mrs. Triggs’s suitcases and bag.
“If you’d follow me, ma’am.”
“I’d like a glass of water before I go up, if you don’t mind,” Mrs. Triggs said. William dropped the bags with a thud.
“One moment, please.” William disappeared down the hall. Mrs. Triggs gave me a pained smile, then walked over to the Albert Bierstadt painting Forest Stream hanging on the wall. She studied the large, tumbled moss-covered boulders beside the still pool in silence for several moments.
“Oh, how I envy you, Miss Davish,” she said, without turning around.
I was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say. I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t. William returned with the glass of water. She turned, drank the entire contents of the glass without taking a breath, and then handed it back to the butler.
“Thank you,” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me toward her. I stiffened at her familiarity. She leaned into me and said, “I know we’ll get along just fine, Miss Davish. Morgan has nothing but praise for you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said. William and I exchanged puzzled glances.
“Oh, do call me Priscilla,” she said. “And I’ll call you Hattie.” She squeezed my arm to punctuate our new acquaintance.
“If you’d follow me now, ma’am,” William said. We started up the staircase. Priscilla walked beside me, with her hand on my arm, almost as if climbing the stairs took too much effort and she needed my support. We approached her room in silence. William opened the door, showed her in, and set up her suitcases.
“The maid can assist you in unpacking if you’d like,” the butler said. “Dinner will be served at seven. If that will be all, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you,” Mrs. Triggs said.
“Is there anything you need, Mrs. Triggs, I mean Priscilla?” I said. I resented Sir Arthur offering my services first as hostess, now as a housekeeper or maid, but both my loyalty to him and the familiarity this woman imposed upon me compelled me to inquire.
“No, it’s too late for me, Hattie,” she said, pulling the drape back from the window. A delivery wagon laden down with pine trees piled several feet high rumbled past in the street below. “It’s just too late.” I glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was only half past five.
What does she mean by that? I wondered as I slipped out the door and hastily closed it behind me.
CHAPTER 5
“It was the greatest adventure of our lives,” a man with only one leg and a long, flowing white beard said. Every head in the room, with the exception of mine and Sir Arthur’s, nodded in solemn agreement.
“I’ll never forget the time I got up to water the trees in the middle of a moonless night,” the one-legged man said. “Just as I finished up and turned around, I bumped right into a rebel, I did. Must of been a scout or something. Well, I be damned if I didn’t pull up my britches and run as fast as I could go. I looked back once, trying not to get shot, and wouldn’t you know, the damn reb was running the other way!” He slapped his one knee and let out a loud guffaw, spreading laughter through the room.
What was Sir Arthur thinking, bringing me here? I wondered.
When Sir Arthur, Lieutenant Morgan Triggs, and I had arrived at the monthly meeting of the #502 Edward D. Kittoe Post of the Grand Army of the Republic, otherwise known as the G.A.R., heads weren’t nodding, but beards were wagging and eyes were raised. Women were not allowed at the meetings and my presence set the men, mostly feeble old men, into passionate complaints. But Sir Arthur had been asked to attend as a special guest, and with General Starrett’s assurances, for he was the Senior Vice Commander of the post, I was allowed to stay and take notes as long as I sat in the shadowed corner and didn’t speak. As the one-legged man’s tale attested, the men quickly forgot I was in the room at all. At least most of the men. In an attempt to shield myself from the coarse men, I vainly buried myself in my shorthand. It didn’t work.
“Who can forget the ‘horizontal entertainment’? ” another man added, chuckling.
Horizontal entertainment? I wondered as several men shouted, “Hear, hear!”
One of the men, with a scruffy gray mustache and several moles on his cheek, looked directly at me and winked. I dropped my gaze, tugged my hat down as far as it would go, and pressed my back against the wall. A moth landed on my tablet, methodically searching the paper for food. When I shooed it away, the man with the moles was still staring at me. I didn’t look up again.
After taking roll call, which I had dutifully captured in my notebook, the Post Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Issac Holbrook, a tall, elderly man with thick white hair that protruded from his head and ran in various directions, read the minutes of the last meeting, including a description of the “sham battle” the men put on for the town. He then reminded everybody of the “Great Men of Galena” house tour scheduled for tomorrow that was organized by the G.A.R. specifically for Sir Arthur, though everyone was invited to attend. Then General Starrett officially introduced Sir Arthur, who in turn introduced his guest, Lieutenant Triggs. The general had allowed Sir Arthur a few minutes to speak to the group. Sir Arthur described his purpose for moving to Galena and then asked if anyone was willing to tell their impression of the war. Contrary to his normal dominating personality, Sir Arthur never passed on the chance to live vicariously through men who had actually fought in the war.
“We had to walk fifteen to twenty miles a day, share our short rations of rancid bacon and hardtack with the worms, use our rifle butts to crush coffee beans, sleep out in the rain with only our coats to cover us, and yet we enjoyed ourselves capitally,” the old one-legged, bearded soldier said.
“Damn near got myself killed three times over,” another said, “but I’d have to agree with Rufus here. I had one hell of a time!” Unlike the other veterans, Lieutenant Triggs did not smile nor did he nod his head in response.
“But you were at war,” Sir Arthur said. “How could you describe your experiences with such joy?”
“I didn’t say it weren’t hell, Mr. Englishman,” the old soldier named Rufus replied. “A man’s not supposed to see his own leg tossed onto a pile of severed limbs like so much refuse or whittle away his hours between battles betting on how long a tick can crawl on a man before it bites him. No, it was war all right but if you’ve never lived through it, you have no idea what we here are talking about.” Sir Arthur flinched. The old soldier didn’t realize it, but he cut right to Sir Arthur’s one known vulnerability. He would’ve given his title and lands for a chance to experience the war as these men had.
“There’s a pride in it, sir,” a small, round-faced, spectacled man said in response to Sir Arthur’s open expression of bewilderment, suspicion, and hurt pride. “I know you are interested mostly in the big men that came from here, like General Grant or Dr. Kittoe, but for us ordinary