by John Jakes
They buried Tillet in the small plantation cemetery on the second of January. A big crowd of slaves watched from outside the black iron fence. During the prayer before the lowering of the coffin, it began to drizzle. On the other side of the grave, Ashton stood next to Huntoon, in defiance of the custom that required all members of the family to mourn together. The coffin was let down into the ground with great care.
Clarissa didn’t cry, merely stared into space. She hadn’t wept since the night of Tillet’s death. After the burial Orry spoke to her. She acted as if she didn’t hear. Again he asked if she was feeling all right. She replied with an incomprehensible murmur. Nor did her face give any clue. Altogether, he couldn’t remember a sadder day at Mont Royal.
After the family left the enclosure, the slaves slipped in to surround the grave and pay respects with a few soft words of prayer, or a hummed phrase of a hymn, or merely a bowed head. Cooper fell in step beside his brother. He marveled that the Negroes could feel kindly toward their owner. But then, he thought, human beings of all colors had never been famous for logical or consistent behavior.
Judith and Brett were walking with Clarissa. Cooper fondly watched his wife for a moment. In mid-December she had presented him with a daughter, Marie-Louise. The infant was at the great house, in the care of the maids.
Cooper noticed his brother’s slumping shoulders and dour face. He tried to think of something to take Orry’s mind off their father’s passing.
“Before I left Charleston, I heard some news about Davis.”
“What is it?”
“You know that last month he refused to confer with Pierce in Washington—”
“Yes.”
“They say he’s relented. He may go to the inaugural after all. It would be a fine thing for the South if he became a member of the Cabinet. He’s an honest man. A sensible one, too, for the most part.”
Orry shrugged. “His presence wouldn’t make a whit of difference, Cooper.”
“I refuse to believe that one man can’t make a difference. If you take that position, what’s the use of going on?”
His brother ignored the question. “Washington’s one huge madhouse these days—and the worst lunatics are the ones the American people elect to represent them in Congress. I can’t think of a less respectable deliberative body, unless it’s our own state legislature.”
“If you don’t like the drift of things in South Carolina, change them. Stand for election and go to Columbia yourself.”
Orry stopped, turned, gazed at his brother to see if he had heard correctly. “Are you saying I should enter politics?”
“Why not? Wade Hampton did.” The wealthy and well-respected up-country planter had just been elected to a seat in the legislature. Cooper went on, “You have the necessary time and money. And your last name makes you eminently electable around here. You haven’t alienated half the population the way I have. You and Hampton are a lot alike. You could be another voice of reason and moderation in the rhetorical storm up in the capital. There are precious few.”
Orry was tempted, but only briefly. “I think I’d sooner be a pimp than a pol. It’s more respectable.”
Cooper didn’t smile. “Have you ever read Edmund Burke?”
“No. Why?”
“I’ve been studying all his speeches and papers that I can locate. Burke was a staunch friend of the colonies and a man of radiant good sense. He once wrote in a letter that just one thing is necessary for the triumph of wicked men, and that’s for good men to do nothing.”
Resentful of what that implied about him, Orry started to retort. A cry from Brett prevented it.
“It’s Mother,” Cooper exclaimed. Clarissa sagged into Judith’s arms, sobbing loudly. Orry was thankful she was letting her misery pour out at last.
His relief changed to anxiety an hour later when he heard his mother still crying in her room. He summoned the doctor, who gave her laudanum to calm her, then said to the assembled family:
“Bereavement is never easy to bear, but it’s particularly hard for a woman who has always been an inseparable part of her husband’s life. Clarissa is a strong person, however. She’ll soon be herself again.”
In that, he was wrong.
Orry noticed the first change within a week. When Clarissa smiled and chatted, she seemed to look through him rather than at him. Servants would put a question to her about a household matter, she would promise to answer as soon as she took care of some other, unnamed task, and then she would walk away and not return.
She developed a new passion, one that was common enough in South Carolina but had never been pursued at Mont Royal. She began to research and draw a family tree.
A green line represented her mother’s family, the Bretts. A red line stood for the paternal line, which culminated in her father, Ashton Gault. Other colors were used for the Mains, so that the entire tree, which filled a large piece of parchment, resembled a rainbow-hued spiderweb.
Clarissa spread the parchment on a table by the window in her room. She spent hours working on it, so that it quickly became smudged and virtually unreadable. Yet she kept working. Every plantation duty to which she had once attended so diligently she now ignored.
Orry said nothing. He understood that Tillet’s death had pushed his mother into some far country of the mind. If sojourning there soothed her grief, well and good. He would take up the slack as best he could.
But there were areas in which he was unskilled or simply ignorant. The plantation began to run roughly, like a clock that was always twenty minutes slow no matter how often it was adjusted.
“Straight, damn it—straight! What’s the matter with all of you?”
It was a bright blue February morning. Orry was supervising preparation of the fields for March sowing. He had yelled at the trackers, experienced Negroes, mostly older, who were stringing guide ropes in parallel lines eleven inches apart. At the moment the trackers were working on the far side of the square. They turned to stare at their owner in a bewildered way; their lines looked straight.
Equally puzzled by the outburst were the trenchers, younger men and women who followed the lines and dug the seed trenches with hoes. Orry had shouted so loudly even some male slaves shoveling out the irrigation ditches at the edge of the square looked up. All the stares told Orry he was in error.
He closed his eyes and rubbed the lids with his fingertips. He had been up most of the night, fretting about his mother and then composing a letter to George to tell him the Mains would no longer summer in Newport. The reason he cited was Clarissa’s condition; the truth was never mentioned. Last summer Orry had felt an unmistakable hostility on the part of some citizens of the little resort town. Putting up with Yankee unfriendliness was not his idea of a vacation.
“Orry, the lines are perfectly straight.”
Brett’s voice brought his eyes open abruptly. He turned and saw her a short way down the embankment. Her cheeks shone. She was breathing hard. Evidently she had come running up behind him just as he reprimanded the slaves.
He squinted over his shoulder. What she said was true. Fatigue or some trick of his mind had caused a misjudgment. The slaves had all resumed working, knowing they were right and he was wrong.
Brett walked to him, touched his hand. “You stayed up too late again.” He shrugged. She went on, “I just broke up a noisy muss in the kitchen. Dilly boxed Sue’s ears because Sue forgot to order more curing salt. Sue swore she told you we needed it.”
Memory rushed back. “Oh, God—that’s right. I am the one who forgot. Last week I was just about to put curing salt on the factor’s list when I was called to look at Semiramis’s baby with the measles.”
“The crisis has passed. The baby will be all right.”
“No thanks to me. I didn’t know what the devil to do with a six-month-old infant. Anyway, how do you know so much about it?”
She tried to say it kindly. “They sent for me right after you left. I couldn’t do much for the child
other than wrap him up to keep him warm. But Semiramis was wild with worry, so I held her hand and talked to her awhile. That quieted her, and the baby got some rest—which is exactly what was needed most.”
“I had no idea what was needed. I felt like a helpless fool.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Orry. Mama carried a lot of the burden of this place. More than you men ever realized.” That was as close as she came to teasing him, and it was just a brief, gentle sally accompanied by a smile. She touched his hand again. “Let me help you run the plantation. I can do it.”
“But you’re just—”
“A little girl? Why, you sound just like Ashton.”
From a whole quiver of arrows she had chosen precisely the right one to pierce and destroy his resistance. He burst out laughing. Then he said, “You’re right, I had no idea how much Mama took care of. I’ll bet Father didn’t either. I’ll be glad to have your help. Thankful for it! Take over wherever you see a need. If anyone questions you, tell them you’re acting on my authority. Tell them to speak to me—what’s wrong?”
“If the slaves must check every important order with you, it’s pointless for me to do the work. What’s more, I won’t. I must have equal authority, and everyone must know it.”
“All right. You win.” His admiration was tinged with awe. “You’re a wonder. And only fifteen this year—”
“Age has nothing to do with it. Some girls learn to be women at twelve. I mean they learn everything, not just how to be pert and flirtatious.” The jab at Ashton wasn’t lost on Orry. “Some never learn at all. I’ll be hanged if I’ll be one of those.”
With an affectionate smile, he said, “Don’t worry, you couldn’t be.” He felt no less tired but a lot better. “Well, I guess we should arrange to get some curing salt.”
“Cuffey’s already on his way to Charleston with the cart. I wrote his pass myself.”
Again he laughed, then slipped his arm around her. “I have a feeling things are going to be a lot better on this plantation.”
“I know they are,” she said. In the field a couple of the trackers exchanged looks, and then relieved smiles.
Ashton paced back and forth in front of the bedroom hearth. Brett was bent over the desk. Outside, ice-covered tree limbs clashed and tinkled. The wind howled along the river.
Another series of sneezes exploded from the guest bedroom. Ashton grimaced. Huntoon had brought her home from Charleston right before the storm hit and had promptly gone to bed with raging influenza.
“I do wish he’d stop that dreadful sneezing,” she exclaimed. Brett glanced up from one of the plantation ledgers, struck by the venom in her sister’s voice. How could anyone be so enraged by illness?
But Ashton wasn’t infuriated by that so much as by some other things. She already missed the lights and gaiety of Charleston. Huntoon had squired her to the season’s most prestigious social event, the great ball sponsored by the Saint Cecilia Society. Back here on the Ashley, she felt caged.
Her little sister, however, seemed perfectly content to spend her time with shopping lists and ledgers. In the past few weeks Brett had started acting as if she were mistress of the plantation. What was even more galling, the niggers treated her as if she were.
“When I’m finished here, I’ll mix up a batch of Mama’s hot lemon toddy,” Brett said. “It might clear his head some.”
“Quite the little physician, aren’t we?”
Again Brett looked at her sister, but this time her expression was more stern. “There’s no call to be snide. I just do what I can.”
“Every chance you get, seems like. I heard you were down in the cabins again today.”
“Hattie developed a bad boil. I lanced and dressed it. What of it?”
“I really don’t know why you waste your time on such trashy business.”
Brett snapped the ledger shut. She pushed her chair back, rose, and kicked her skirt to one side.
“Somebody ought to remind you that all that trashy business, as you call it, keeps Mont Royal running in the black. It pays for those bolts of brocade you bought for your Saint Cecilia gown.”
Ashton’s mocking laugh was a defense. She had chosen to reach her goals by manipulating others while pretending to play the traditional feminine role. Brett, by contrast, was asserting her independence. Ashton envied that. At the same time, it made her hate her sister all the more.
She hid the hatred with a shrug and a pirouette toward the door. “Calm down. I don’t give a hoot if you bury yourself in this place. But remember one thing. Those who mean to rise in the world don’t waste time on the problems of niggers and white trash. They court the important people.”
“I expect they do, but I’m not trying to rise, as you put it. I’m just trying to help Orry.”
Smug little bitch, Ashton thought. She wanted to use nails on her sister’s eyes. Injure her, make her weep for mercy. Instead, she smiled and said gaily, “Well, you go right to it, and I’ll tend to James. Oh, but I am curious about one thing. You’re so busy doctoring and ciphering, when will you have time to answer those letters from your cadet? He’s liable to forget you.”
“I’ll always have time for Billy, don’t you worry.”
The quiet words pushed Ashton close to the point of explosion. She was diverted by the sound of another gargantuan sneeze from Huntoon. She rushed into the hall, nearly colliding with Cousin Charles, who was on his way downstairs. A moment after she stepped back, she too sneezed.
“Say, Ashton, where’d you get that cold?” Charles grinned and hooked a thumb toward the guest room. “Did he give you anything else in Charleston?”
“Go to the pits of hell, you foul-minded scum!”
“What’s the matter? Getting too uppity for a joke?”
The slam of a door was his answer.
Inside the guest room, Huntoon stared at Ashton while listening to a storm of the vilest profanity he had ever heard.
In the spring following the inauguration, President Pierce toured the North with members of his Cabinet. Lavish banquets were held in several major cities. George and Stanley attended the one in Philadelphia.
Pierce was a handsome, affable man. Stanley was so overwhelmed to be in his presence he practically fawned. George was more interested in the new secretary of war, Jefferson Davis.
Davis carried himself like a soldier. He was in his mid-forties and still slim, although his fair hair showed a generous amount of gray. He had high cheekbones and deeply set blue-gray eyes. George had heard that one eye was blind but didn’t know which. Nor was it apparent.
During the reception that preceded the dinner, George had a chance to hear some of the secretary’s views. Davis began with a topic that seemed to be his chief reason for accompanying the President—promotion of a transcontinental railroad.
“I am a strict constructionist,” the new secretary told George and half a dozen others gathered around him. “I believe the Constitution prohibits the Federal government from making internal improvements in the separate states. So you might logically ask—”
“How is it possible to justify government aid for a railroad?”
Davis smiled politely at the man who had interrupted. “I couldn’t have said it better, sir.” Everyone laughed. “I justify it as a matter of national defense,” he went on. “If not linked to the rest of the country, the Pacific coast territories could all too easily be snatched away by some foreign aggressor. Further, a transcontinental line—running through the South, preferably”—a couple of his listeners bristled at that; the secretary appeared not to notice—“will help us defend our frontiers by making it easier to move men rapidly to threatened areas. At present, the Army numbers only about ten thousand officers and men. Between here and California there are an estimated four hundred thousand Indians, forty thousand of them considered hostile. That danger demands new responses.”
“What might those be, Mr. Secretary?” George asked.
“For one, more men in
the Army. At minimum, two new regiments. Mounted regiments that can travel a long distance in a short time. The Indians don’t fear our foot troops. They have a name for them. ‘Walk-a-heap.’ It is a term of contempt.”
George had heard that Davis was more soldier than politician; he was beginning to believe it. The man impressed him.
“Many things about our military establishment are badly out of date,” the secretary continued. “Our tactics, for example. To remedy that, I plan to send an officer to study the tactics of the French army. If the Crimea explodes, as appears likely, we’ll also have a rare opportunity to observe European armies in the field. Further, improvements need to be made at our Military Academy.”
“That interests me, sir,” George said. “My brother is currently a plebe, and I graduated in the class of ’forty-six.”
“Yes, Mr. Hazard, I’m aware of both facts. In my opinion, the West-Point curriculum must be expanded”—nothing new there; the idea of a five-year course of study had been afloat for several years—“with more emphasis given to mounted tactics. I want to build a new riding hall. Enlarge the stables—”
Another listener broke in, “They say you might also build a second military academy in the South, Mr. Secretary.”
Davis whirled on the speaker, sharp for the first time. “Sir, that is a false and pernicious rumor. A second military academy may have been proposed by others, but never by me. Such an institution would only promote sectionalism, and sectionalism is the last thing we need in this country at present. When John Calhoun spoke against the Clay compromise, he said that the cords binding the states together were breaking one by one. He believed disunion was inevitable. I do not. One of the bulwarks of my faith stands in the Hudson Highlands. If any institution promotes a national point of view, it is West Point. I for one intend to keep it that way.”
In spite of automatic suspicion of any politician from the deep South, George found himself joining the others in a round of applause. Still, Davis’s attitude represented the ideal rather than the reality. Billy had recently written to say that strong Northern and Southern cliques existed at West Point and that sectional tensions were increasing. Charles Main would be enrolling at the Academy in June. Would the tensions interfere with the friendship he and Billy had formed? George hoped not.
