Charleston by Margaret Bradham Thornton

Author:Margaret Bradham Thornton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS, ELIZA SPENT THE MORNINGS completing all of the work she had brought with her from London. She mailed the remaining pages of Magritte back to her adviser and did as much as she could on her Williams-Bonnard essay without being able to consult the Bonnard catalogue raisonné. In the afternoons, she worked at the South Carolina Historical Society located in the Fireproof Building on the corner of Meeting and Chalmers streets. She methodically examined the Guignard family papers before turning to the Vanderhorst papers. She read deeds and wills and letters until her eyes ached from the hours she spent deciphering the eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century script. She found nothing that referenced Henrietta Johnston or any portrait. So little of Johnston’s life was known, and yet by any standard she had left behind more than most. The soil of the South was filled with unnamed and unknown women who had not gotten a fair chance from life—women like Cornelia, who had never been given much hope for a better life. Eliza admired these women’s quiet dignity as they made do with what they had. She found their strength comforting.

Each day, she met Henry after work, and they walked to restaurants downtown or drove over to Folly Beach to the cottage where Henry grilled fish. They took Lawton to a few movies and early suppers at Bill’s Grill. For those two weeks, the days stretched out with so much luxury that Eliza felt as if there were spaces between each second. She tried not to think too much about where she was for fear it would all disappear.

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