The Darling Dahlias and the Confederate Rose

But then she had opened her hat shop and the Darling ladies fell in love with her romantic creations—floppy-brimmed hats with meringue puffs of ribbon-laced tulle and gardens of silk blossoms. Miss Champaign’s hats were very like those worn by Southern ladies before the War Between the States and very unlike the smart, sleek, head-hugging felt cloches that were all the rage just now, and everybody loved them—even the Darling men, who (truth be told) didn’t like those snug felt helmets much, anyway. Charlie agreed. A lady’s hat should make her look like a lady, not like a German artillery officer.

He managed to stop before he actually stepped on her. “Good afternoon, Miss Champaign,” he said, and removed his Panama hat.

She looked back down and pulled a handful of weeds. “Good afternoon, Mr. Dickens,” she said. And that was all.

He took three careful steps around her, then paused, wondering if, after all, it might be worth trying again. Probably not. And if she said no again, it would be the last time. The very last time.

He cleared his throat. “I was thinking of having dinner at the hotel this evening,” he said, although he hadn’t been thinking anything of the sort. “Perhaps you might join me?”

She pulled another batch of weeds. The sunlight glinted on her russet hair. “No, thank you,” she said, and he thought he heard a hint of something like regret in her voice. Just a hint, but enough (despite his resolution) to embolden him.

“Tomorrow, then,” he said, and thought about the Old Alabama’s menus, which were the same for every week. “Tuesday night is chicken night, as I remember. Baked with dressing.”

“I don’t believe so, Mr. Dickens, but thank you for the invitation.”

“You’re welcome,” Charlie said with resignation, and put his hat back on his head. He paused, and then said outright what was in his mind. “Miss Champaign, is there a ghost of a chance you will ever say yes to me—about anything?”

She seemed startled by that but paused to consider for a moment, still holding her handful of weeds. “I don’t know that I can answer that, Mr. Dickens. I suppose it would all depend.”

He leaned forward, watching her. “Depend on what?”

“I have no idea,” she said, and tossed the weeds into her basket.

With a sigh, Charlie walked back to the newspaper office, where he sat down at his desk and began to turn the pages in the old scrapbook, which proved to be clippings from the Richmond, Virginia, Daily Dispatch of the early-to-mid-1860s. At the time, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy, of course. That’s what he was doing when Lizzy walked past the window without seeing him, on her way home from work.

*

Back in the library, Miss Rogers took out the cards she had just filed and studied them. When Bessie Bloodworth had returned from the Dispatch office that morning, she had reported that Mr. Dickens seemed to have some interest in the transcription of the symbols and numbers and had promised to look into the matter. When he had come into the library a little while before, Miss Rogers had felt a bright flare of hope, thinking that perhaps he had come to pursue his research into the secret code, if that’s what it was. Miss Bloodworth said that she hadn’t mentioned her name to him, so Mr. Dickens could have absolutely no idea that she was the owner of the embroidered pillow.

She put the three cards on the desk and studied them. She knew the books he had taken, of course. She was intimately acquainted with all the books in her little library and felt toward them as she would have felt toward her children, if she’d had any. She had cataloged each one of them, dusted them daily, and had read a great many (even those that she felt were undeserving, for she hated for any book to feel neglected).

She could tell you where the books had come from, too, for she included that information on their cards. My Imprisonment and the scrapbook of clippings had been the gift of a lady from Richmond, Virginia, who had lived out her last years with her Darling daughter. The history of Civil War battles was written by a Confederate captain named Adam Warren and had come from the collection of the founder of the Darling Academy, a nephew of the author. None of the three books, as far as Miss Rogers could see, had anything remotely to do with the transcription of symbols on her grandmother’s pillow. Mr. Dickens must have been exploring some other research topic when he borrowed them.

With a feeling of deep disappointment, she put the three white cards back in the tin box and closed the lid, sighing heavily as she put the box in the drawer. It was time to resign herself to the bitter truth. The mystery of her grandmother’s embroidered pillow—what it meant and why it was made—would never be solved.





FOURTEEN

Lizzy, Verna, and Coretta