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The night that Emma left home, Jane Green spent over an hour crying quietly on the settee in her darkened morning room. She had lost her daughter. Lost her forever.
Emma had always been more James’ child than hers, she knew. She was able to communicate with James in a way that their other children could not. Alice did not really bother to try, and Jimmy was an utter failure at it. She had seen how Emma had convinced him to let her volunteer as a nurse, and he had told her how their conversation had started with Euripides with a note of respect in his voice that he never used when speaking of Jimmy. She and Emma had rarely spent time together, with Emma preferring to keep out of the way among the books in her father’s library or study and herself busy with running the household, keeping Alice in line, and soothing Jimmy’s constantly-bruised ego. Jane could not help but to think that if she had found a little more time for Emma, her eldest daughter would not have taken such an irreversible step.
In truth, Emma had been slipping away for months. It had started with the unexpected show of rebellion last May. Emma would be volunteering in that charnel house, come hell or high water. For the first several weeks, she and James prayed that Emma would tire of the gore and return to her proper place as a proper young lady. As the weeks passed, they realized it was futile. Her horror at blood spattered gowns was dismissed with a shrug by Emma. Alice’s delicately wrinkled nose at the new roughness of her sister’s hands was greeted by a proud lecture about doing something for their boys. Jane had felt a minute of fleeting hope that morning when Emma had been mistaken for a servant by the visiting Lord, but it clearly had not come to fruition.
The change in Emma’s opinions was more gradual, so gradual that Jane had scarcely noticed it until it was too late. It had started with her being less scornful of her father and brother for not fighting, which Jane attributed to what she had seen at the hotel. She started referring to their hotel as the hospital, and stopped fussing about the officers in the guest rooms. Jane had assumed she was gaining some restraint and maturity as the war dragged on, until the shouting match in what had been the hotel’s drawing room. That had made things clear as crystal, as Emma shouted about the Yankee’s right to recovery. Emma had stopped caring about the cause. She was only interested in alleviating the damage.
The signs had all been there. First, Emma’s flagrant disregard for her parent’s word starting that warm May morning when she was only nominally asking James for permission to go to the hospital. She was not to leave until after breakfast, to be home in time to change for dinner, and not to work on Sundays. That was the original deal. By the second week, she was attending Sunday service at the hospital instead of with the family, and staying to volunteer. By the end of May, she was eating dinner in her calicos. By halfway through June she was grabbing biscuits from the kitchen on her way out the door a half hour before Alice swept down the stairs. Her leave time grew earlier and her arrival time later with each passing day, until she was helping Belinda with the morning biscuits and arriving home at dusk to eat leftovers at the abandoned sideboard. And that was before the first time she had stayed out all night. Now, they were lucky if she took dinner with the family once a week and she ate the rest of her meals in the dimly lit kitchen, discussing recipes for men with bowel complaints with Belinda. If they wanted to see Emma during the daytime, they had to find her at the hospital.
It had come to a head, tonight. Everyone had stormed out of the parlor, their emotions telegraphed through their walks. Alice had been in high dudgeon, and James enraged. Jimmy had been as lackadaisical as only one who had given up on earning approval could be. Belinda had rushed away, her emotions as perfectly hidden as one could ask for in a servant as Jane had slumped back into the couch, exhausted from the high emotions. But not so exhausted that she did not notice the concerning edge of determination in Emma’s angry stride; the hint of purpose that had been the cause of no few worries for her poor mother over the last six months. And so Jane had let the impact of the last ten minutes wash over her for a time before dragging herself from the cushions and walking lightly up the stairs—only decades of training keeping her from trudging.
Jane walked into Emma’s room to find her daughter folding a night rail, the carpet bag she had taken to school open on her bed. A glance inside revealed three calicos, a gown with both a day and evening bodice, four petticoats, three pairs of stockings, and a tape crinoline. All of Jane’s fears were realized in that moment.
“What are you doing?”
“Packing,” Emma replied a tight quality to her voice that spoke of her determination and, if Jane had been listening for it, the tears she was holding back.
“You have not thought this through. Where will you go?”
“I’ll go to the hospital; they have rooms there for the nurses.”
“Not for volunteer nurses.”
“I am not a volunteer nurse.”
Jane felt the need to sit down, and looked around for a chair she could sink into. She did not know if she could handle another revelation tonight. Her daughter was being paid by the Federal Army. Her daughter, who just six months ago had allowed such disgust to seep into her voice over James selling them coffins, was being paid to care for their boys.
“How long?”
“Since the end of July. Around the time that Yankee went missing, in fact.”
Jane could hear the rage in Emma’s voice, and nodded weakly as she absorbed this information. It seemed her family had been falling apart since then in more ways than she had realized. For if Emma, who had spent the majority of 1861 discussing the philosophy of the failure of the American Experiment with James, had ceased to care about the Cause to the degree that she was employed by the enemy then she had changed more than any of them had realized. Emma had walked over to the bookshelf now, looking at the titles and deciding which to bring. It was time for a last ditch effort.
“Your reputation will be unsalvageable, living with all those men, unchaperoned. What would your fiancé think?”
“My reputation is in as much or more real danger here, with uninjured officers living down the hall. You should ask Alice how that apparently worked out for her. At least at the hospital I’ll have a nun for a roommate. And I do not have a fiancé.”
There was a lot for Jane to unpack in those statements, but what really caught her attention was the assertion that Emma had no fiancé. Jane kept a whether eye on her girls’ beaux. They were pretty and vivacious young women, the toast of Alexandria upon their debuts. Frank had approached James about Emma’s hand before he had joined the cavalry, and Emma had glowed for days after he mounted his horse and rode away. They were engaged. Jane knew it. And Emma was a faithful sort of girl. It was why she had not been worried about impropriety when she had gone to the front with that preacher. Jane knew that he would protect her from all harm, and would never do anything against Emma’s wishes. And Emma was engaged, so he could expect no encouragement from her. But Emma, apparently, was not engaged. An assertion backed up by Emma’s passing over her escritoire as she packed three small books of philosophy into her carpetbag.
“If you do this, you will not be able to find a husband here after the war is done,” Jane warned.
“Then I’ll move. I am sure somebody would have me. If necessary, I can go live with Nurse Mary’s people in Boston. Or go West.” Emma shrugged like this statement was nothing, before reaching between her mattresses and pulling out a small stack of pamphlets.
“What are those?” enquired Jane weakly, not knowing quite what she was expecting and unable to keep herself from one more shock.
Emma showed her the cover of one, “The Patriarchal Institution, as Described by Members of its own Family,” and another, “The Unconstitutionality of Slavery,” and a third, “Bible View of Slavery.”
Jane would have been less shocked by pornography. She rose, realizing that there would be no convincing Emma to see reason, and left the room.
She went directly to her morning room, which faced the street. Fifteen minutes later, she saw her daughter leave the house carrying nothing but that small carpetbag and burst into tears.