Sarah's Roses, Book III: Roses of Red

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIII

Jeff had some sort of secret scheme. I knew it from the way he would sit in Uncle Andrew's study with the accountant books and sheets of papers with numbers scribbled all over them. He would come to meals with ink stains on his fingers, shirt, and trousers. The most annoying part was he would not let me into whatever it was he was doing.

"Just wait a little, Sarah," he would inform me when I would try and badger him to take me into his confidence, "all good things to those who wait."

Jeff has an iron will and nothing can move him once he has made up his mind, but I am equally as stubborn. When it became clear he would talk to me about his plans, I still continued to pester him just the same. His silence would cost him his peace, and though I knew my badgering would go nowhere I did it anyway just to annoy him.

It had been wonderful to receive news from Colonel White, and the letter had brought with it news from Boston as well. I learned that Robert had returned home safely from the war, but had lost his leg. This did not hinder his ability to work. As a watch maker he spent most of his days sitting at a desk anyway. It still saddened me to know that he was now a cripple, and as my father so eloquently put it in the letter it was all thanks to those butchers, i.e. the surgeons.

It was a minor wound, Sarah, Father's letter had said. There truly was no need to amputate. But they were lazy and did not want to clean it out and treat it properly, so they simply cut off the leg at the knee and had it all done and over with. Butchers, they were all nothing short of butchers. Robert is lucky that his profession make is possible for him to still support his family, many of my men lost their limbs to such surgeons and now have no way of feeding themselves and their families.

It was a sad reality of the war, one of many sad realities that we would all have to learn to live with. Father had been kind enough to include Robert's address and encouraged me to write him, saying Robert wished to remain in communication with me. Elsie was also mentioned in the letter. Father said he delivered her to the Climbs and it was an emotional and tearful reunion. I tried to imagine it in my head. I could see the tears of joy at seeing Elsie mingled with tears of grief knowing Sammy would never return home.

Father didn't say much of his own plans, but he did write a little of his family and how they were getting alone. I almost felt he was writing about another planet. Could people really be carrying on as though the war had never happened in some parts of our country? Where there really places where houses had not been burned, lands destroyed, and people killed? Of course I knew all the fighting had mainly taken place on Confederate territory, but I hadn't quite comprehended just how much our lives were altered as opposed to those in the north, who had not been touched by the dogs of war.

I had written a reply to my father, telling him the news of my side of the world and penned a letter to Robert as well. Jeff had accompanied me on my trip to the post office even though I was still leery of taking him for long walks. We had mailed the letters and hoped to hear some word from Lt. Harper. There was none however and we resigned ourselves to waiting.

March came around and we were well into the middle of it when one evening George came over just as we were sitting down for dinner.

"I'm sorry to interrupt," he informed, "but that Lt. Harper is at the door and there is a lady with him."

Jeff and I leapt from our seats and in juvenile fashion fought each other to get to the door first. I put any ladylike behavior I had acquired aside and scrambled past Jeff and towards the hall where I could see the figures of Lt. Harper and his wife waiting for us to come and greet them.