by John Jakes
“Now, you lout, I intend to administer a lesson in deport—”
Charles butted him in the stomach, getting barbecue relish in his hair. The result was worth it. Smith clutched his middle and doubled over. In that position, his whole face was vulnerable. Charles gave him a thumb in the eye.
“Kill him,” one of the other boys yelled. Charles wasn’t sure that they didn’t mean it. He rocketed off in the direction of the food.
Smith’s friends raced in pursuit. Dropping to hands and knees, Charles scuttled underneath one of the tables. Fingers closed around his ankle and pulled him backward. He reared up and tipped the table—the crash that attracted the attention of Justin LaMotte, his brother, and many of the guests.
Charles had discovered that Smith knew nothing of frontier-style fighting. He presumed the same was true of the other three. Possessed of that advantage, he began to enjoy himself. He turned abruptly on the boy who had grabbed his ankle. When Justin and Francis arrived, closely followed by Francis’s ten-year-old son Forbes, Charles was straddling the boy’s chest, merrily pounding his head with bloody knuckles.
“Get him off!” the older boy gasped. “He—doesn’t fight—like a gentleman.”
“No, sir, I fight to win.” Charles raised the boy’s head by the ears and bashed it against the hard ground.
“Charles, that is enough.”
The voice startled and alarmed him. He was jerked to his feet and whirled around. There stood Orry in his splendid uniform, fire in his eyes. Behind him Charles saw Cooper, Aunt Clarissa, and a sea of guests.
He heard one woman declare, “What a shame. All that intelligence—those good looks—wasted. He’ll come to a bad end, that Main boy.”
Several others agreed. Charles gave the crowd a defiant glare. Orry shook his arm hard, and Aunt Clarissa apologized for the trouble and offered to pay for the damage. Her tone made Charles blush and hang his head at last.
“I believe it might be best if we left now,” Aunt Clarissa said.
“Oh, I’m sorry you can’t stay longer,” Justin said. Charles knew he didn’t mean it.
On the way home, Orry started to lecture him. “That was an absolutely disgraceful scene. I don’t care how badly you were provoked, you should have held your temper. It’s time you began acting like a gentleman.”
“I can’t,” Charles retorted. “I’m not a gentleman, I’m an orphan, and one isn’t the same as the other. Everybody at Mont Royal makes that pretty clear all the time.”
In the boy’s angry eyes Cooper detected a flash of hurt. Orry squared his shoulders like a general who had been disobeyed. “You impertinent—”
“Let him alone,” Cooper interrupted softly. “He got his punishment when all those people talked about him.”
Charles peered at Cooper. He was stunned to find that the thin, studious man knew so much about him. To conceal his embarrassment, he turned to gaze out the window.
Orry blustered and started to argue. Clarissa touched his hand. “Cooper’s right. No more discussion until we’re home.” A few minutes later she tried to slip her arm around Charles’s shoulders. He pulled away. She looked across at her oldest son and shook her head.
When they reached Mont Royal, Tillet thrashed Charles in spite of Clarissa’s protests. Tillet echoed the sentiments of the woman at the wedding:
“He’ll come to a bad end. Do you need any further proof?”
Clarissa could only stare at her husband in silent dismay.
Somewhere in the great house at Resolute, a clock struck two.
The night air was humid and oppressive, heightening Madeline LaMotte’s feeling that she was hopelessly trapped. Her fine cotton gown had tangled around her waist, but she didn’t dare move to straighten it. Movement might rouse her husband, snoring lightly beside her.
It had been an exhausting day, but worse than that, the last few hours had brought her nothing but shock and pain and disillusionment. She had expected Justin to be gentle and considerate, not only because he was an older man but because he had behaved that way in New Orleans. Now she knew it had all been a sham, designed to create a false impression for her and for her father.
Three times tonight she had been taught the bitter lesson. Three times Justin had exercised his rights. He had done it roughly, without once asking whether she was agreeable. There was only one small redeeming factor: the revelation of his dishonesty lessened her shame over the deception she had perpetrated on him.
This deception—the slight show of blood the first time—had been arranged with the help of Maum Sally, who knew about such things. The deception was necessary because Madeline had foolishly allowed herself to be seduced at a young age. That one mistake changed the course of her life. But for it, she wouldn’t have been forced to ignore her own beliefs about personal honor and resort to deceit on her wedding night. Indeed, she never would have found herself in this frightful situation at all.
Madeline’s seduction had occurred in the summer of her fourteenth year. To this day she carried a medallion-bright memory of Gerard, the carefree, good-looking boy who had worked as a cabin steward on one of the big Mississippi steamboats. She had met Gerard by chance one afternoon on the levee. He was seventeen and so jolly and attentive that she was soon ignoring the silent dictates of her conscience and sneaking off to meet him whenever his boat docked in the city—about once every ten days that summer.
Later in August, on a dark, thundery afternoon, she gave in to his pleadings and went with him to a sordid rented room in an alley in the Vieux Carré. Once he had her in a compromising position, he forgot about politeness and used her vigorously, although he was careful not to hurt her.
He failed to turn up for their next prearranged meeting. She took a great risk by going to the gangplank of the steamboat and asking for him. The deckhand to whom she spoke was evasive; he didn’t know exactly where Gerard could be found at the moment. Then Madeline chanced to look at one of the upper decks. Behind a round cabin window she glimpsed a dim face. The instant Gerard saw her watching, he stepped back into darkness. She never saw him again.
For days she feared she might bear a child. When that consuming worry passed, she began to feel guilty about what she had done. She had wanted to make love with Gerard, but now that she had and she realized that he’d wanted nothing else from her, passion gave way to remorse and to a fear of all young men and their motives. The events of the summer drove her to try to atone, if that were possible, by means of adherence to new and more rigid standards of behavior she set for herself.
In the next few years she discouraged all young men who wanted to call on her, and in fact she avoided men almost completely until her father brought Justin LaMotte to dinner. The South Carolinian had two things to recommend him—kindly charm and his age. She was positive he was not driven by passions, as Gerard had been. That was one of the reasons she had finally changed her mind about Justin’s proposals.
The change actually took place a few days after her father’s seizure. One evening by the waxy light of bedside candles, he pleaded with her:
“I don’t know how much longer I can live, Madeline. Set my mind at ease. Marry LaMotte. He’s a decent and honorable man.”
“Yes,” she said as the candles wavered, stirred by Fabray’s slurred speech. “I think so, too.”
Only something as compelling as Nicholas Fabray’s plea from his sickbed could have overcome her fear of marriage. But even her regard for her father couldn’t banish her sadness at leaving her home, her small circle of friends, and the city she knew and loved. She made the long journey to South Carolina because she wanted to give her father peace of mind and because she trusted Justin LaMotte to be what he seemed.
How wrong she had been. How brutally, idiotically wrong. In terms of what he wanted, Justin was no different from younger men, and in one way he was worse. Gerard, at least, had tried not to hurt her.
She didn’t blame her father for what had happened. Yet she believed things migh
t not have reached such a state if she had also had a mother to counsel her. Madeline had never known her mother, whom Nicholas Fabray always described as the finest woman in the world. Evidently she had been an intelligent, sophisticated Creole of great beauty. Fabray said Madeline resembled her strongly, but there was not a single picture to prove or disprove that. Just before his wife’s sudden and unexpected death, he had commissioned a miniaturist to paint her portrait. He said it was the second greatest disappointment of his life that he had not made the arrangements sooner.
Dear God, it was all such a frightful tangle, Madeline thought. So full of bitter ironies. How she had argued with Maum Sally about the wedding-night deception! She had said no to it again and again, even though Maum Sally insisted the deception was not only essential but, given prevailing male attitudes on virginity, an act of kindness toward Justin. The deception would ensure a smooth and trouble-free start to the marriage.
How damnably guilty she had felt for giving in—and how pitiable that guilt seemed in the light of her husband’s treachery.
Then there was her meeting on the river road with the young military cadet, Orry Main. She had been taken with his gentle good manners and deep, dark eyes. She had wanted to touch him and she had done so, forgetting for a few seconds not only that she was about to be married but that he could not possibly be what he seemed. He was, after all, just about her own age.
Unexpectedly, an image of Orry slipped back into her thoughts as she lay beside her husband. Even at the reception she had felt a brief but powerful attraction to the young cadet. With her mind’s eye she studied the imaginary face. Suddenly, guilt attacked her again. No matter what Justin had done to her, he was her husband. Even to think of another man was dishonorable.
Yet Orry’s face lingered. To help banish it, she flung her forearm across her eyes, with more noise than she intended. She went rigid. The sound of Justin’s breathing had changed. She straightened her arm at her side and tightened both hands into fists.
He was awake.
He started to speak but began coughing. In a faint voice she asked, “Are you all right?” It was concern she didn’t feel.
He rolled onto his side, his back toward her. “I will be as soon as I clear this cough with some bourbon.”
In the dark he knocked a glass off the bed stand. He blurted words Madeline had heard only a few times in her life, even though she was no stranger to profanity; Papa had strong views and sometimes punctuated them with oaths.
Justin didn’t apologize for the filthy language. He drank directly from the bedside decanter. Then he uttered a long sigh and rolled back onto his elbows. The moon was up now; its brilliant light washed over his silky hair and muscular chest. For a man his age, he had very little flab on him.
He grinned at her. “You needn’t worry about my health, my dear. It’s perfect. Most of the LaMotte men have lived well into their nineties. I’m going to be around to enjoy your favors a good, long time.”
She was too upset to say anything. She feared the huskiness in his voice and what it portended. He sounded almost testy when he continued, “I want you to bear me sons, Madeline. My first wife couldn’t. Francis once had the nerve to suggest the fault was mine. Nonsense, of course—as we’ll soon prove.”
He rolled again, coming toward her like some fleshy juggernaut. He swept the sheet off her.
“Justin, if you don’t mind, I would first like to get up and use—”
“Later,” he said. He pushed the hem of her bed gown up above her stomach and shoved his hand between her thighs, hurting her.
She closed her eyes and dug her nails into her palms as he flung himself on top of her and began to grunt.
7
ORRY WENT BACK TO the Academy with the embroidered wreath still on his cap. The only person with whom he could discuss the momentous summer was George, who took note of his friend’s melancholy state and tried to jolly him out of it.
“What you need, Stick, is a visit with Alice Peet. She’ll soon make you forget this Madeline.”
Orry gave him a long, level look, slowly shook his head.
“Never.”
George was concerned about the fervor Orry put into that word. He hoped his friend wouldn’t pine over a married woman for the rest of his life. He clapped an arm across Orry’s shoulder and tried to buck him up. It didn’t help.
Orry himself saw the need to find some antidote for his misery, He sought it in a herculean effort to lift himself out of the ranks of the immortals. But the second-class curriculum was no easier than those of his first two years. He liked the natural and experimental philosophy course, which included mechanics, optics, astronomy, and even a little about electricity. Yet he couldn’t escape from the lowest section, no matter how he tried.
It was the same in advanced drawing. Professor Weir was merciless about Orry’s watercolors, referring to them as daubs. George continued to breeze through everything with no apparent effort.
The one distinct improvement over last year was the opportunity to exercise the body as well as the mind. Second classmen took riding instruction from a professor nicknamed Old Hersh. Orry was a good rider, which was probably a blessing. At graduation, cadets were theoretically free to choose the branch of service they wanted to enter. But as a practical matter, the six branches were just as rigidly ranked as the cadets in their academic sections. Only the top graduates got into the engineers or the slightly less desirable topogs. Cadets at the bottom of the academic standings went to the infantry or to the dragoons and mounted rifles. The last two branches were held in such low esteem by the Army high command that all who served in them were permitted to grow mustaches. Orry suspected he would be growing one, and riding a lot.
Elkanah Bent had been chosen a cadet officer during summer camp. He strutted about in his scarlet sash and plumed hat, but the rank did nothing to improve his character. He continued to abuse plebes and yearlings with ruthless glee. One plebe, a lanky Kentuckian named Isham, became a special target because, like Orry and George, he showed defiance when Bent deviled him.
Not long before the national elections, Bent charged Isham with repeatedly losing step during an evening parade. Exhausted and coming down with a fever, Isham confronted Bent outside South Barracks later that night. He asked Bent to withdraw the report since he already had 164 demerits. At the rate he was going, he wouldn’t be around to see whether he could pass the first-term examinations.
As the more experienced cadets could have told him, that kind of plea brought out the worst in Cadet Lieutenant Bent. He accused Isham of insolence to an upperclassman—several other cadets overheard that much—then marched the plebe away into the dusk for some “disciplinary drill.”
Next morning after reveille, George and Orry learned that Isham was in the hospital. Gradually they pieced the story together. Bent had taken the plebe to the top of the winding path leading down to the North Dock. He then ordered Isham to march up and down the path at quickstep. It was a warm night, exceptional for late October, and heavy with humidity. After forty minutes Isham was reeling.
Bent sat on a boulder halfway down the path, smiling and calling mocking encouragements. Isham refused to beg for quarter, and Bent refused to give any. The plebe lasted about an hour. Then his legs gave out and he pitched sideways, tumbling and crashing down the slope to the bottom. He lay unconscious until a few minutes after midnight. Bent, naturally, had disappeared the moment Isham fell. There were no witnesses.
The plebe staggered to the hospital without his pack. An examination showed him to be suffering from a concussion and three broken ribs. Rumors flew on the Plain. Orry heard from several cadets that Isham would be crippled for life.
But the Kentuckian was strong. He recovered. Only after he was released from the hospital did he tell some fellow plebes what had happened. It was from them that George and Orry learned the truth, although they had guessed much of it, as had many others.
One of the tactical officers heard the
story and placed Bent on report for disciplinary excesses. Isham refused to accuse his tormentor, however, so the evidence against the Ohioan remained circumstantial, hearsay. When confronted with the charges, Bent denied them heatedly and at length.
Pickett brought that news down to Gee’s Point on a Saturday afternoon. Orry, George, and several friends were taking advantage of the prolonged hot spell and swimming in the river. George’s reaction was blunt.
“That bastard. Were the charges dismissed?”
“Of course,” Pickett said. “ What else could happen after he denied them?”
George reached for his shirt hanging on a branch. “I think we ought to do something to fix Mr. Blubber Bent.”
Orry felt the same way, yet, as always, his was the voice of caution.
“Do you think it’s our affair, George?”
“It’s the affair of the whole corps now. Bent lied to save himself. Do you want a person like him commanding troops? He’d send a company to slaughter, then shift the blame onto someone else without a qualm. It’s time we got him out of here for good.”
The presidential campaign moved into its last days. Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, had substantially softened his original position on the Texas issue. Now he sounded almost like his opponent. But anti-annexation men continued to warn that bringing Texas into the Union could precipitate America’s first war in thirty years. If so, it would be a war that would test West Point programs, and West Point graduates, as they hadn’t been tested since the era of Sylvanus Thayer. The issue and the election would be decided on December 4.
George and Orry paid little attention to the political debate. They were preoccupied with their studies and their plot to bring about Bent’s downfall. The plot remained little more than a nebulous wish until George made his next visit to Benny Haven’s. There he happened to learn that one of Alice Peet’s regular customers was Army Lieutenant Casimir de Jong, the tactical officer who had preferred charges against Bent in the Isham affair. Later he reported to Orry:
