Deed

By Doris Gartlan

Set in the Civil War Era around Philadelphia, this is a short story about a young lady, Chessie, coming of age and falling in love with the mysterious newly arrived Canaan. Feel her emotions through her words and thoughts as she battles against "Her" for Canaan's love and affection. Seduction and secrets abound within this journey into the uncertainty of war and love.
Written by Doris Wingate Gartlan and edited/published by Daniel K Gartlan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Daniel K Gartlan
• Release date: Apr 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005905019

Doris Gartlan

Doris Wingate Gartlan was born and raised in Appalachian Virginia and experienced happiness and sadness as we all have. She married and had a family of her own and eventually settled in the Lowcountry of coastal South Carolina. It was through this personal journey that she has based many of her writings on.

Book preview

Deed

Doris Wingate Gartlan

Published by Daniel K Gartlan at Smashwords

Copyright 2021 Doris Wingate Gartlan

Deed

She came to me again last night, while I was trying to close the shutters of my mind and find peace in sleep. She appeared, as she always does during her flickering visits, the way she was when last I saw her. She was never prettier than when she lay sweetly upon her bed of white velvet and satin. Had it not been for the cold metal, one might have thought she was sleeping in her bed. Alas, the metal surrounding her was a coffin. Some think she was put there by my hand; for we both loved the same man and with her death she was removed from my life.

Ah yes, I know what she wants. I have known for a long time now she would not rest until the story was told. Today..well..I wonder..why not? I am grown old; the fire of my life lies now under the live oak with its spreading arms and its vine of sweet jasmine. He loved the smell of jasmine, and soft nights under the southern moon when the wind caresses his face and caused one to dream.

The Visit from her last night, well it was different from the others. It sort of floats around today, haunting me. It is a good day for haunting. The world is grey and clammy-lonely. The rain cries its monsoon tears over the angel oaks, the weeping Spanish Moss, nudges the budding magnolias from sleep.

I wonder how she found me down here in this sea island with its beautiful marshes. It is so different from the home we knew on the banks of the Susquehanna River near Philadelphia.

Had it not been for that awful, horrible, glorious war she might have never met him. Nor would I have met him, and my life would have been void of such feeling.

She met him the first time, I think, at a grand party thrown by Philadelphia elite. She was part of them, but somehow not a part, as if she were almost their kind-but not quite. They were folk who owned the industrial apparatus that helped finance the war, that made money from that war. Lincoln, with his imagined humility and backwoods ways was at one and the same time God and their burden.

Canaan came to our house at her invitation some few days later. I was sixteen, soon to celebrate my birthday…my seventeenth one with a soiree at