Sunrise

Praise for Sunrise

An excellent job of characterization. My family has really come alive for me. I shall treasure this book always.

—Lisa Felton, Great-Great-Granddaughter of Anne Tracy and William Butler Johnston

Other Novels by Jacquelyn Cook

Magnolias

The River Between

The Wind Along The River

River of Fire

Beyond the Searching River

Sunrise

by

Jacquelyn Cook

BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

BelleBooks

PO BOX 300921

Memphis, TN 38130

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-935661-23-8

Print ISBN: 978-0-9768760-9-0

Copyright © 2008 by Jacquelyn Cook

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

Cover design: Martha Crockett

Interior design: Hank Smith

Photo/Art credits:

© Deborah Smith and © Feng Yu, Fotolia.com

Other Credits

Poems of Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier, edited by Mary Day Lanier

©1981 University of Georgia Press

Used by Permission

:Eswd:01:

Dedication

for

Ann and George Felton who wanted to preserve the devotion of a great family

and for

My family without whose devotion I could not have written this book

Chapter I

Macon, Georgia 1849

THE GINKGO TREE, shimmering like gold against the October sky, drew Anne Tracy to the crest of the hill. In her fluttering crepe, she felt at one with the tree, stripped of purpose, as it soon would be when its fan-shaped leaves deserted all at once. Her father had brought the sapling from the Orient, promising to take her there. But Papa was dead. He had left her an heiress at twenty, yes, but for what good when she had no place in life.

I wish I could have stayed at his bedside, but that was Aunt Carry’s privilege as his wife. There’s no room for me now.

Anne felt as formless as the shadows, awkward in her black garments. She had such enthusiasm for life that, even before Papa’s passing, the Aunts had whispered she would shame them by breaking the strict code of mourning. But this spot was home, and she forced back her anger and uncertainty, trying to absorb the peace of the scene she so loved before they sent her away.

Beneath the brow of the hill, landscaped boulevards terraced down to the Ocmulgee River. In the quietness, a steamboat drifted. Anne’s face warmed with a rising glow, and she parted her lips to drink in the beauty. She wished she could paint. The paddle wheeler hovered, etched against forest of pine emblazoned with dogwood, maple, hickory—crimson and amber with autumn’s palette.

A locomotive whistled. The steamer’s stacks responded with a blast of sound and sooty smoke. The race to the cotton warehouse was on!

Anne smiled. She liked the vibrancy of Macon, Georgia, and she knew, much as she longed to see the countries she had studied, preparing to tour with Papa, it was here she wanted to live. Macon had sprung full grown amid the wilderness upon the signing of the Creek Indian Treaty twenty-odd years ago. On the fall line between the foothills of the Appalachians and the subtropical Coastal Plain, the town was delightful with year-around flowers. But the warmth went deeper, overflowing into people of graciousness and hospitality.

Anne was proud that her father, Edward Dorr Tracy, had been Macon’s second mayor, and she painfully swallowed her shyness to speak to workmen and gentlefolk alike. Yet, she knew that her social prominence and the mores of 1849 left her with little say in the course her life could take.

Matrimony’s all women can hope for. Haven’t the Aunts warned me often enough I’m passing marriageable age? Anne thought. But she could not overcome being stiff with her few suitors. She never flirted over a fan like a proper Southern belle. She knew her voice held too little of her Georgia mother Susan Campbell’s gentility, too much of her Connecticut-born father’s correctness.

But most young men seem shallow. Silly. It irks me to hide my intelligence. I want to discuss Shelley, Keats, and, oh, especially Byron.

She had had her coming out at sixteen. She adored dancing the old cotillion sets at balls, but she dreaded the Sunday afternoon at-homes, knowing any girl who did not have forty callers was a failure. Papa carefully supervised her suitors, warning, We must be careful since you’re no beauty. What humiliation she had endured when he rejected some as fortune hunters.

What guide will I have now?

She deplored her plainness. Straight, dark brows made her face severe, but her despair was her heavy brown hair. With only a hint of auburn and no curl at all, it resisted the curling iron even though she left it in the fireplace until it was hot enough to singe. Did I inherit nothing from my beautiful mother?

The thought pained. She lowered her lashes, and the tableau appeared, vivid as always. Her mother had sat swathed in quilts with the baby, Little Edward, nursing at her breast. Anne, five, and Philemon, three, listened as she taught their Bible lesson through fevered lips. When her sisters had entered the darkened room, Susan had exhorted the weeping women to live every day to be prepared for death, and then she uttered words Anne would never forget.

"Carry, I want you to take my children. I do not want them to go to the North. Don’t let my family be parted. Queeny, take care of my children’s principles, implant in their breast, faith as you have got, my dear Christian sister. Eddy, I believe you will yet marry . . ."

Philemon had pressed his wet nose against Anne’s arm. She clutched him against her, sensing more than understanding, vowing no one would take her brother from her. Crooning, Anne had swayed in the darkness and squeezed her eyes tight.

Now the sound of laughter made her open her eyes and blink in the sunlight. A dozen neighborhood boys, pounding along on bare feet, ran around the corner of the Tracys’ house. Schoolbooks and shoes thrown aside, they had picked up bows and arrows and were whooping, playing Indians. Pattering behind them, seven-year-old Sidney Lanier made a sweeter tune, a whistling Anne thought as lovely as a robin singing in the rain.

Why Sidney, honey . . . she said, stopping the child whose grandparents lived behind the Tracy house in a cottage on High Street, . . . How did you make that beautiful music? Her voice was a warm lilt she could never manage with adults as she knelt beside the winsome little boy.

Delighted by her attention, Sidney held up a river reed, cork-stoppered at the end, with six finger holes and a mouthpiece. I made myself a flute. Papa doesn’t like for me to play the violin.

To Anne’s amazement, Sidney produced a cardinal’s simple pretty-pretty and then a trill like a mockingbird. She knew that his mother, Mary Jane, had begun teaching him piano when he was only five. Sidney had learned the guitar, organ, and violin, his favorite; then a window sash fell, taking off a half-inch of a middle finger. Anne shook her head in wonderment. Undaunted by the loss, Sidney had turned to the flute.

The handsome child fanned back long lashes from gray-blue eyes and looked up at her as if he read her thoughts. Miss Anne, I just have to make music!

Anne smiled. God has given you a great talent. Tenderness swelled, and she brushed back the brown curl that fell over Sidney’s face. A twinge in her breasts made her realize it was not just a home of her own she wanted. It was children. She hungered for a family devoted as hers had been. She could make room in her heart for a great many.

She kissed Sidney’s forehead and let him run after his playmates. Guilty thoughts plagued her. She had never lacked anything. Plump, bustling Aunt Carry had fulfilled her mother’s deathbed request and kept the three children together. Anne never released her grip on Phil, but her stepmother would not let her touch baby Edward. After the proper year of mourning, Aunt Carry had married their father. She gave them two half-sisters and a half-brother. But slender, quiet Susan was a loss Anne never forgot, a void that would not be filled.

Anne sighed as she picked up the mourning bonnet she had tossed beneath the ginkgo. She could be more thankful for her Campbell aunts if they did not always try to curb her high spirits and curiosity to learn about life. They fluttered round her like a flock of hens. They taught her, protected her, but sometimes with so many she felt pecked.

It was time to go to yet another set, who lived in Alabama. Anne clapped on the offending hat with its knee-length swath of chiffon, but even as she tied the ribbons beneath her determined chin, she vowed she would come back. Only Macon felt like home.

Turning, she saw a man motioning to her as he cut across the parkway of Mulberry Street. She wondered why he was moving on such a wave of energy. The boulevard ended at the bottom of the hill, and his flat-heeled boots ploughed the spongy dirt as he climbed the steep ascent of Georgia Avenue to reach her. He looked as if the red dust never settled on his clothes. His cosmopolitan long jacket with a stylishly shaped-in waist was a city style that set him apart from the others on the street, proclaiming him a dynamic businessman. But his high top hat threatened to tumble. She giggled. It wouldn’t dare!

What is his name? He’s been to the house working with Papa. Oh, yes. William B. Johnston. He owned an iron-front jewelry store in one of the two downtown blocks of Mulberry, Macon’s main thoroughfare.

Anne adjusted the heavy veil over her face as Mr. Johnston neared, but it was the inner cloak she slid over her eyes that shut him out.

Miss Tracy! Mr. Johnston said too loudly in his eagerness. He swept off his hat and smoothed brown hair precisely combed over his ears. I’m so glad I caught you. I’ve been on a lengthy buying trip to New York. I’ve only just now heard of Judge Tracy’s passing.

Anne nodded formally. She knew the mellow tones of his pleasing voice came from a Virginia-born father and a childhood spent on a Georgia plantation, but she noticed his speech had gained a rapid pace since his serving as a watchmaker’s apprentice in New York City.

I wanted to extend my condolences, he said. Then he withdrew a step.

Above his trim beard, his cheeks reddened. Anne wondered if he feared he had overstepped their social barrier, but Macon usually allowed none of the snobbish planter-aristocracy practiced in the older cities of the neighboring Piedmont. Here, merchants and industrialists built houses beside the white-columned mansions of the landed gentry.

She tensed all the more at the stiffness between them, but she tried to put him at ease, responding in gracious tones, How kind of you, Mr. Johnston. I know my father counted you as a friend.

Oh, I wouldn’t put myself forward to say he thought that much of me, he blustered. But I had planned to speak with him—about . . .

His pomposity fell away. Face open, hurting, he gazed at her with a heat that made her shiver. Then he stammered, "I-I hope you’ll let me be your friend. If there’s anything—anything at all you need . . ."

There’s—nothing . . . What does this man want? I don’t understand the hungry way he’s looking at me. She felt herself standing away, viewing the scene, remembering how neighborhood children used to come to play—not with her—but with the dolls Papa had bought. Does Mr. Johnston see me as money? Did he plan to borrow from Papa?

She had heard the man opened his jewelry store with only two hundred dollars capital. But, no. She recalled Brother Phil had talked about Mr. Johnston’s peculiar ways: he had bought Central Railroad stock at thirty cents on the dollar, but because he believed in odd numbers, when his holdings rose to $99,900, he would buy no more.

Anne hid her hands behind her, twisting them. The unusual little man confused her. He had spoken with an air of importance when he discussed railroads with Papa, insisting they would link Macon with the world. Now he was stuttering like a schoolboy. She felt uneasy, and yet as she watched with averted eyes, she recognized painful withdrawal behind the quiver of his pointed brown beard. A kindred spirit? But he was twenty years older than she, old enough to be her father.

Silence suspended between them like glass. She swallowed, knowing she must break it.

You’re very kind, sir, but I’m being sent to spend my mourning period with my Campbell kin in Montgomery. I’m about to leave. Dismissal sounded clearly in her voice, but his fuzzy whiskers trembled again, and she relented. Gesturing, she said, I’m having one last moment with the view I love most.

Mr. Johnston followed the direction of her gaze, and a smile played over his straight, firm lips. She guessed it amused him that she turned from the boulevards, laid out by city fathers claiming the pattern of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and looked instead across the river at the east bank where the Old Ocmulgee Fields were once farmed by Creek Indians. Beyond were the ceremonial mounds of other Indians with origins lost in antiquity. Their mystery had always fascinated her, but she could think of nothing intelligent to say.

I’ve been trained to act with poise, she thought. Why is it so hard for me to talk with a man? Especially Mr. Johnston. He seems better than anyone else, remote, lifted high on a pedestal like God. Struggling, she said inanely, I like to recall Hernando De Soto discovering this place three hundred years ago. She smiled. His priests baptized two Indian converts right here in the Ocmulgee.

Yes, he said, but he appeared unable to say more.

Anne ducked her head and forged ahead with the conversation. I’ve read the diary of De Soto’s march through Georgia, and I’ve always been glad the Indians were wily enough to know the Spaniards were seeking gold. I believe they purposely sent them in the wrong direction.

It’s refreshing to talk with a young lady who’s taken advantage of her education. I haven’t had the opportunity for classical study, as you’ve had, but I always figured the Indians knew of the treasure in our mountains. Did you know I’ve been buying gold from our Dahlonega miners and selling it to the U.S. Mint at Philadelphia?

Oh? Really? It’s good De Soto never found it. She frowned. So, is making money all that matters to him? "I’m sorry, but it’s time for me to go."

May I write to you?

Would that be proper? she asked.

Narrow shoulders drooping, Mr. Johnston took his watch from his waistcoat. Swinging the heavy chain that connected it to the opposite pocket, he looked at her for a long moment. Then, he snapped open the case and consulted the watch as if it could answer her question.

Perhaps not at this time, he said without lifting his head.

ALABAMA’S LIKE Georgia, Anne thought as she trudged along a clay road on her Aunt Frances Campbell Rowland’s plantation. Same cotton fields. Same pine trees. Why am I so homesick? I’m not a child. Why does it hurt so not to have a papa any more?

Anne hated November’s gray skies as much as she detested wearing black, but her muscles and nerves screamed to get out of the house bursting with three talkative sisters. She felt sorry for long-suffering Uncle Isaac Rowland who provided a home for his wife’s spinster sisters, Eliza and Flora. And now another old maid. Me. Aunt Eliza was loving, but Flora was a complainer, talking of nothing but illness and death.

Anne tried to be helpful, but life on a cotton farm was so different that she could not find what she should do. She missed the afternoon calls of Maconites, the evening musicales and theatricals, her chattering circle of friends.

She kicked at a pile of leaves. The Council of Aunts decreed she should stay here, hidden away for prescribed grieving, but she was young, in vibrant health, eager for activity. She chafed at the mourning etiquette fashioned by Queen Victoria’s reign. She would never get over missing Papa. She pictured him, hands folded in prayer.

You haven’t tried to pray, she told herself. Well, God couldn’t be interested in my silly problems.

When she returned to the house for the noon meal, Uncle Isaac handed her a letter. She blinked in surprise. It was from Mr. Johnston. Around the table, all eyes were upon her.

Probably business, she said, shoving the letter in her pocket.

Through the fried chicken Anne was indifferent. Next the salt-cured ham claimed her attention. Hunger quieted, she began to wonder. As the vegetables were passed, she fingered the letter. By the time the apple dumplings were served, she did not take time to add whipped cream.

Excusing herself, Anne went into the library. She took down a book and placed the letter inside the pages so that she could read it unnoticed if anyone entered.

Macon, Georgia

November 23, 1849

Dear Miss Anne,

How are you? Fine I hope. I thought you might like news of home.

I saw your brothers at a political meeting. Philemon is becoming quite a handsome young man—if a bit impetuous. He spoke heatedly about the South’s equal rights to all this land acquired in the War with Mexico. Young Edward Junior remained sedate. It is he, I think, who will be more like Judge Tracy.

Yes, Anne thought, Lit looks like Papa.

She felt warmed by the friendly letter. She read Mr. Johnston’s discussion of the Missouri Compromise with growing pleasure. Mr. Johnston excited her more than any suitor she had known. He, like Papa, recognized that a girl could have a mind.

The library desk provided an ample supply of paper. Anne dipped a pen in the crystal inkwell and then sat so long thinking of a beginning that she dropped a spreading blot.

Montgomery, Alabama

November 29, 1849

Dear Mr. Johnston,

How nice of you to send me news of home. All of the friends my age seem too busy to write . . .

She read it over, tore it up, embarrassed.

It was ridiculous to be afraid of him at this distance, but the agony of a polite reply hung over her for several weeks before she tried again.

Montgomery, Alabama

December 15, 1849

Dear Mr. Johnston,

How nice of you to send news from Macon. I miss being in town. I like business and bustle and people about. I’m not suited to quiet plantation life.

But I’m much happier now that the weather is warm and sunny. My uncle gave me a little horse that gallops like the wind. I love to ride. Do you?

Sincerely,

Anne Clark Tracy

Mr. Johnston’s answer was immediate:

. . . I’m not suited to country living either. Perhaps it was best, after all, that my father left his entire plantation to my eldest brother. Business has treated me well.

Do I detect bitterness, Anne wondered, or merely bragging?

Christmas came, and the entire Campbell clan gathered on the plantation. Anne became her joyous self again, seeing Phil and Lit. When the time came for them to leave, she clung to them, feeling part of herself gone.

Aunt Frances, jolly and plump, began teaching Anne to sew, but still she felt restless. She decided to write Mr. Johnston again.

. . . A rainy New Year. I hate rain. At least this house has a lovely library. I’m reading Greek mythology and poetry. I especially like George Gordon Lord Byron.

He replied:

. . . Fire broke out February 19, on Cotton Avenue. It destroyed all of the buildings. The loss was over $100,000.00. Fortunately, I represent Hartford Fire Insurance Company, and most of the businesses had insured with me.

Letters from Anne’s family only included personal news, and she was pleased that Mr. Johnston kept her abreast of Macon happenings.

ONE HOT AUTUMN day, a year after she had left Macon, she received a thick envelope.

Macon, Georgia

October 17, 1850

Dear Miss Anne,

Your letters show a sharp and witty personality and your well-developed literary interests, giving evidence of your fine education at the Episcopal Institute of Montpelier, reveal you as the only sort of woman with whom I could spend my life. When you return to Macon, will you allow me to court you?

I must tell you that when I opened my jewelry store in 1832, I also sold swords and dueling pistols. My fortunes increased greatly because the Macon volunteers bought from me when they marched off to fight the Creek War of 1836 and again four years ago when our brave lads joined in fighting the Mexican War.

I was part of the group that built the Central Rail Road from Macon to Savannah. It is the longest railroad in the world owned by one company. I am also a director of the Macon and Western Railroad that connects us with Atlanta. These railroads make Macon the Queen Inland City of the South, and my real estate investments turn tidy profits.

Now, you may have heard that my bank floundered in the Depression of 1837, but thanks to my lawyer friend Christopher Memminger, that problem is straightened out and I have netted $50,000.

At any rate, I am now secure in my fortune. I am turning the jewelry store over to my brother, Edmund. I am retiring from active business to manage my investments.

I expect to take a year off to make a Grand Tour of Europe. Would you do me the honor of accompanying me as my wife?

Sincerely yours,

William Butler Johnston

Shocked, Anne flung down the letter and ran out to tramp the falling leaves. She had shared her interests on blank, impersonal paper, and they had become friends. But how could I ever talk in person with the man?

She was afraid to cry. She might not be able to stop.

Face it, you ninny, she scolded herself. You’ve read too much of Byron. You want to experience love, but you’re never going to find it.

THE SILENT WINTER was over at last, and Anne returned to Macon, having agreed to be courted, nothing more. Her anticipation mingled with dread.

But when Phil met her at the depot and they drove through town, she wanted to leap from the buggy, shouting, I’m home, running, arms outstretched, hugging all she met, stopping only to sniff the glorious gardens. Spring never crept in here, crocus by crocus. It burst forth in a symphony of color and scent, and she drank in camellias and daffodils, flowering crabs, tea olives. Above it all in the treetops, swags of wisteria shed their heady fragrance.

Romance is in the air, she cried.

Phil laughed. There’s a cotillion tonight. I’ll be glad to escort you if you don’t mind going with a mere sibling.

I’d be proud to go with a brother who’s grown so dashing while I’ve been shut away, Anne said, hugging him warmly, loving the man as much as the boy she had mothered.

They arrived at the Tracy house, and Anne could see Aunt Carry’s round form silhouetted against the sunlight from the open end of the dogtrot porch.

As soon as Anne could fulfill a proper greeting, she bubbled out a request to attend the ball.

Aunt Carry mopped her face with her ever-present handkerchief. Let’s wait. Don’t you think you should?

Wait? Anne’s breath seemed to stop, but then her eyes narrowed. Haven’t you been saying I’m about to pass marriageable age? How can I wait? She saw she had struck the right nerve and lowered her lashes lest a twinkle escape.

Aunt Carry blustered, and then agreed. Anne pressed further.

I’m sure it’s time I advanced from black crepe to lavender taffeta.

Well . . . Maybe, but only if you promise to keep mourning bands on your forearms.

At that moment, Anne’s friends began arriving. Some showed wedding rings while others boasted of upcoming nuptials and extended invitations to bridal showers and teas. The remaining few whispered of still deciding between gallant suitors.

Is everyone attached to someone special? Anne