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He was defrauded by his New York business partners and sued in Massachusetts by men who owed their very lives to him, but his spirits never dimmed and he never lost his faith in either God or humanity or the abolitionist movement, which he had championed all his life.
After his death she could not bear the New England winters in their family home up on the Merrimack, nor the unrelieved whiteness of the fields that seemed to flow into the horizon like the blue beginnings of eternity. The inside of the house had become a mausoleum, its hardwood surfaces enameled with cold, and by mid-January she had felt that her soul was sheathed in ice. In her mind she would re-create their clipper ship voyages to Spain, Italy, and Greece, and she would see the two of them together in late summer, hiking with backpacks on a red dirt road in Andalusia, the olive trees a dark green against a hillside of yellow grass that was sear and rustling in the heat. She and her father would hike all the way to the top of the mountain and sit in the warm shade of a Moorish castle, then fix lunch and eat it, while in the distance the azure brilliance of the Mediterranean stretched away as far as the eye could see.
It was a place she went back to again and again in her memory. It was a special place where she lived when she felt threatened, if the world seemed too much for her late and soon, like a cathedral in which she and her father were the only visitors.
When she came to south Louisiana during the yellow fever epidemic and smelled the salt breeze blowing off Lake Pontchartrain and saw roses blooming in December and palm trees rising starkly against the coastline, like those around Cadiz, she felt that the best memories in her life had suddenly been externalized and made real again and perhaps down a cobbled street in the old part of New Orleans her father waited for her at an outdoor cafe table under a balcony that was hung with tropical flowers.
Perhaps it was a foolish way to be, but her father had always taught her the greatest evil one person could do to another was to interfere in his or her destiny, and to Abigail that meant no one had a right to intrude upon either the province of her soul or her imagination or the ties that bound her to the past and allowed her to function in the present.
But now, in the drowsy shade of a colonnade in April 1865, at the close of the greatest epoch in American history, she wished she was on board a sailing ship, within sight ol Malaga, the palm trees banked thickly at the base of the Sierra Nevada, like a displaced piece of Africa, the troubles and conflicts of war-torn Louisiana far behind her.
"You all right, Miss Dowling?"
She looked up, startled, at Mr. LeBlanc. The boy in brown homespun and the Confederate-issue kepi stood behind him, his choke sack tied with a string around his wrist.
"This young fellow here says a preacher bought him a stage ticket to find Willie Burke," Mr. LeBlanc said.
The boy stared down the street, as though unconcerned about the events taking place around him.
"What's your name again?" Mr. LeBlanc asked.
"Tige McGuffy."
"Where did you know Mr. Willie from?" Mr. LeBlanc asked.
"Shiloh Church. I was with the 6th Mis'sippi. Me and him was both at the Peach Orchard."
"And you have no family?" Mr. LeBlanc said.
"I just ain't sure where they're at right now."
"Don't lie to people when they're trying to help you, son," Mr. LeBlanc said.
The boy's cheeks pooled with color.
"My daddy was with Gen'l Forrest. He never come back. The sheriff was gonna send me to the orphans' home. The preacher from our church give me the money for a stage ticket here," he said.
His skin was brown, filmed with dust, his throat beaded with dirt rings. He studied the far end of the street, his mousy hair blowing at the edges of his kepi.
"When did you eat last?" Abigail asked.
"A while back. At a stage stop," he replied.
"When?" Abigail asked.
"Yesterday. I don't eat much. It ain't a big deal with me."
"I see. Pick up your things and let's see what you and I can find for lunch," she said.
"I wasn't looking for no handouts," he said.
"I know you're not," she said, and winked at him. "Come on, walk me home. I never know when a carriage is going to run me down."
He thought about it, then crooked his arm and extended it for her to hold on to.
"It's a mighty nice town you got here," he said; admiring the buildings and the trees on the bayou. "Did Willie Burke make it through the war all right?"
"I think so. I'm not sure. The 18th Louisiana had a bad time of it, Tige," she said.
