by John Jakes
The last time he waited, he found broken branches and trampled grass, suggesting that other lovers had discovered the ruined church. He didn’t go back. In desperation he asked one of his house slaves to try to learn whether his notes might have been intercepted. Nancy had run away months ago, so the whole system of communication could have broken down. But apparently it hadn’t, at least not the way he feared. Within a few days the slave reported, “I heard from Resolute, Mr. Orry. She gets the notes, all right. Girl name Cassiopeia takes ’em to her.”
“Does Mrs. LaMotte read them?”
“Far as I can find out, she does. But then she tears ’em up or throws ’em in the fireplace.”
Recalling that, Orry struck out with the book. He accidentally hit the uniform stand and sent it toppling. The crash brought Brett and two house girls. Without opening the door, he shouted that he was all right.
A thought occurred to him, renewing his hope. On Saturday there was to be a tournament near the Six Oaks. It was possible that Madeline would attend with Justin. Orry usually avoided such affairs, but he would go to this one. He might have a chance to speak with her, discover what was wrong.
Saturday’s weather was close, showery, with rumbles of thunder. A large and enthusiastic crowd gathered for the tourney, but Orry had no interest in watching the young men who had christened themselves Sir Gawain or Sir Kay. As they rode recklessly at the hanging rings and tried to capture them on their lances, he roamed the crowd searching for the LaMottes.
He finally spied Justin conversing boisterously with his brother and several other men. Encouraged, he kept moving, looking for Madeline. He caught sight of her from the spot where Cousin Charles had stood and waited for Whitney Smith to fire at him. She was seated on a log, watching light rain stipple the river.
He approached, noticing that the log had dirtied her skirt. She must have heard his footsteps, but she didn’t turn. Feeling awkward, adolescent—fearful—he cleared his throat.
“Madeline?”
She rose slowly. He stepped back when he saw her face. It was white, the pallor of sickness. She had lost weight; ten or fifteen pounds at least. The loss gave her cheeks a sunken look. She seemed to struggle to focus her eyes on him.
“Orry. How pleasant to see you.”
She smiled, but it was the same perfunctory smile he had glimpsed when he encountered the carriage. He could barely stand the sight of her eyes. They had always been so lively and warm. Now—
“Madeline, what’s wrong? Why haven’t you answered my messages?” Though there was no one else close, he was whispering.
A troubled look flickered across her face. She glanced past his shoulder. Then her eyes met his again. He thought he saw pain there, and an appeal for help. He strode toward her.
“I can see something’s wrong. You’ve got to tell me—”
“Madeline?” Justin’s voice jerked him up short. “Please come join us, my dear. We’ll be leaving soon.”
Orry turned, trying to keep his movement casual, belying the tension within him. Madeline’s husband had called from the other side of the dueling field. To allay possible suspicion, Orry tipped his hat in formal greeting, which Justin acknowledged in the same way. Orry kept his smile broad and rigid, as if he were only exchanging pleasantries with a neighbor’s wife.
In reality he was whispering: “I must talk to you alone at least once.”
She looked at him again. Longingly, he thought. But she sighed and said, “No, I’m sorry, it’s just too difficult.”
With a slow, almost languorous step, she walked away to rejoin her husband. Orry was fuming; he wanted to seize Justin by the throat and shake him until the man told him what was wrong. Clearly Madeline wouldn’t. She acted listless, dazed—as if she were in the grip of a fever.
But it was the memory of her eyes that tortured him as he rode homeward. They held a strange, submissive look, devoid of hope; lifeless, almost. They were the eyes of a beaten animal.
40
ABOUT TO DON THE yellow facings and brass castle insignia of the Corps of Engineers, Billy Hazard could examine his world and declare it a fine place.
The fears of the New Jersey cadet whom Ashton had entertained had never been realized. The silence of the seven had evidently kept any rumor from reaching Charles. One of the group had grumbled to Billy that Ashton must have lied about a second visit—something he could have told them from the beginning. But after that, the incident was gradually forgotten under the continual pressure of military drill and academic work.
Billy’s view of the world tended to be shaped by events in his daily life and not by what was happening elsewhere. Had he looked outward, beyond the Academy and his thoughts of Brett, he would have seen turmoil.
Bloody warfare continued in the Crimea. One of his brother’s classmates, George McClellan, had been sent there to observe by Secretary Davis. Other kinds of violence boded ill for America. Men fought each other in Kansas—and in the halls of Congress. During a speech about Kansas, Senator Sumner of Massachusetts had mingled his political rhetoric with an unwarranted personal attack on Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina. On the twenty-second of May, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina strode into the Senate chamber with a gold-knobbed cane, which he proceeded to employ to demonstrate what he thought of the speech, and Sumner.
Sumner soon cried for mercy as blood dripped onto his desk. Brooks kept hitting him until the cane broke. Incredibly, other senators looked on without interfering. One of the bystanders was Douglas, whose legislation had created the very issue Sumner had addressed.
A few weeks later, Brett wrote Billy a letter saying Brooks was being feted all over South Carolina. Ashton and her husband had entertained him at their home and presented to him a cane inscribed with words of admiration. The cane was one of dozens Brooks received. The letter continued:
When James and Ashton were here last week, Orry remarked that Sumner might not recover for a year or more. James raised one eyebrow and said, “So quickly? What a pity.” I hate these times, Billy. They seem to call forth the very worst in men.
Not even those sentiments could discourage Billy just then. He was only days from leaving the Academy, and he had done well there, particularly in his first-class year: Mahan had publicly praised his work in the military and civil engineering course. Billy could differentiate between Pinus mitis and Pinus strobus, write an essay on argillaceous and calcareous stones as construction materials, or recite the formula for grubstone mortar in his sleep. He would graduate sixth in overall standings in the class of 1856.
George, Constance, Maude, even Stanley and Isabel were coming to West Point for the event; George and Isabel could manage to speak to each other when the occasion required it. The conversation was always cool and formal, however; the ban on visiting between the two houses was still in force. Billy had heard Constance say it was a shame to hold grudges considering life was so short, to which George replied that precisely because it was short, anything that prevented him from wasting part of it in Isabel’s company was a godsend.
Charles congratulated Billy on his class ranking while relieving him of blankets and personal cadet effects. Charles had never competed academically with his friend; he remained steadfastly a member of the Immortals, bound for the mounted service, exactly what he wanted. Prospects for advancement in the cavalry—in all branches, in fact—had greatly improved since Davis had pushed through an expansion of the Army a year ago. Two new regiments of infantry had been authorized, and two of cavalry. Superintendent Lee had already been transferred to the new mounted regiment commanded by Albert Sidney Johnston, another Academy graduate. Charles hoped to join one of the new units next year.
Billy already knew his first posting as a brevet second lieutenant. After his graduation leave he would report to Fort Hamilton in New York harbor, there to work on coastal fortifications and harbor improvements.
Traveling home with the family, Billy got his first ride on the Lehigh lin
e, which now served the upper reaches of the valley, including Lehigh Station. When the Hazards left the train, the baggage master complimented George on his brother’s appearance.
“You’re right, he does make a good soldier. He’s dashing enough to make me miss the Army. Almost,” George added with a smile.
“I wish Brett could have come up for June week,” Billy said.
George studied the tip of his cigar. “Do the two of you have plans to discuss?”
“Not yet, but I expect we will. I need to talk to someone about that.”
“Will an older brother do?”
“I was hoping you’d offer.”
“Tonight, then,” George said, taking note of Billy’s serious expression.
After supper Billy went upstairs to put on mufti. George kissed the children and hurried to his desk, where he eagerly opened a letter that had arrived during his absence; it bore a mailing address in Eddyville, Kentucky.
Some months before, he had heard about a Pittsburgh man, William Kelly, who operated a furnace and finery in Eddyville. Kelly claimed to have found a fast, efficient way to burn silicon, phosphorus, and other elements out of pig iron, thereby sharply reducing its carbon content. What Kelly termed his pneumatic process produced a very acceptable soft steel, he said.
Beset by creditors and jeered at by competitors who called his process “air-boiling,” Kelly continued to perfect the heart of the process, his converter, at a secret location in the Kentucky woods. George had written to propose that he travel to Eddyville and inspect the converter. He had also said that if he liked what he saw, he would finance Kelly’s work in return for a partial interest.
George’s face fell when he read the reply. True enough, Kelly could use the money to stave off his creditors. But he didn’t want to show his converter to anyone until he was satisfied with the design and had applied for a patent. The man’s suspicion was well founded. Some in the iron trade would say or do almost anything to learn the details of a successful process, then cheerfully pirate it if it was unprotected. Still, Kelly’s answer left George disappointed, and it was in this frame of mind that he went to the front porch to meet his brother.
Billy was not there yet. George sank into a rocker. Down on the near shore of the river, a freight train was traveling up the valley, shooting puffs of smoke from its stack. The smoke turned scarlet in the sundown, then quickly dispersed.
Amazing, all the changes he had seen in thirty-one years. He had grown up with the canal boats, and now they were gone. Trains and the rails that carried them were the symbols of the new age.
Railroads were playing a role in affairs in Washington, too. Slavery, and the ultimate fate of Kansas and Nebraska, were inextricably bound up with a forthcoming decision on a route for a transcontinental line. Secretary Davis wanted a southern route, through slaveholding states. Senator Douglas favored a northern route, with one terminus in Chicago. It was no secret that Douglas had speculated in Western land. His enemies openly accused him of introducing the Kansas-Nebraska bill to stimulate settlement, which would in turn attract railroad development and increase the value of his holdings.
No motives were pure anymore, George thought as he watched the sinking sun burnish the low peaks beyond the river. No man seemed capable of dealing with all the problems and passions of a world grown complex and cynical. There were no statesmen, only politicians.
Or did he merely think that because he was getting old? At thirty-one, he had already lived three-fourths of an average lifetime. The knowledge weighed on his mind. He mused that a man’s hopes, dreams, time upon the earth, disappeared almost as quickly as those puffs of smoke from the freight locomotive.
He heard Billy’s tread on the stair and pulled himself together. His younger brother looked to him for advice—wisdom—never realizing that older people were almost as uncertain of everything as Billy was, if not more. George did his best to hide the fact. He was rocking and contentedly puffing a cigar when Billy appeared.
“Shall we take a walk up the hill?” George asked.
Billy nodded. They left the porch, strolled toward the rear of the house, and soon passed the stable and woodshed, reaching an open, level area where mountain laurel grew from crevices in the rock. Above, on the slope, more laurel had taken root and flourished. Hundreds of white blossoms moved in the evening wind, and there was a faint sound of pointed leaves clashing.
George started toward the summit, considerably higher than the loftiest point of Belvedere. The path was difficult to find, but he remembered its starting point and was soon laboring upward with the laurel blowing and tossing around his legs. The climb winded him, but not Billy.
On the rounded summit, a few stunted laurel bushes survived. They reminded George of his mother’s mystical feeling for the hardy shrub and the way she equated it with family and with love.
Below, the panorama of the houses, the town, and the ironworks spread in perfect clarity. Billy admired the view for a moment, then reached into his pocket and handed his brother something in a cheap white-metal frame.
“I’ve been meaning to show you this.”
George tilted the photograph to catch the last light. “Good Lord. That’s you and Charles. Neither of you looks sober.”
Billy grinned and returned the photograph to his pocket. “We posed for it right after a trip to Benny’s,” he said.
“When did photography reach West Point?”
“They started class pictures a year ago. Charles and I wanted one of the two of us.”
George gave a kind of grudging laugh, then shook his head. “Cooper Main’s right. We live in a miraculous age.”
Billy lost his relaxed air. “I wish a few miracles would drift down to South Carolina. I don’t think Orry wants me to marry Brett.”
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?” When Billy nodded, he went on, “Have you spoken to Orry or written him about your intentions?”
“No, and I won’t for a year or so. Not until I’m positive I can support a wife.”
What a careful, deliberate sort he is, George thought. He’d make a fine engineer.
Billy continued: “Brett’s dropped a few hints to him, though. We both get the feeling he doesn’t favor the match. I guess he doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not it at all. You and Brett come from different backgrounds, from parts of the country growing more hostile to each other every hour. I’ll bet Orry’s worried about the sort of future you two would have. I admit I share that worry.”
“Then what can I do?”
“Follow the same advice Mother gave me when people said I shouldn’t marry a Catholic and bring her to Lehigh Station. She told me to heed my own feelings, not the bigotry or the misguided opinions of others. She said love would always win out over hatred. She said it had to, if human beings were to survive. Orry doesn’t hate you, but he may be doubtful of your prospects.” A flickering smile. “Stand fast, Lieutenant. Don’t surrender your position, and in the end I expect Orry will give in.”
“What if it takes a while?”
“What if it does? Do you want Brett or not?” Suddenly George leaned forward. He snapped off a sprig of laurel and held it up in the faint light. “You know Mother’s feeling for this plant. She says it’s one of the few things that outlasts its natural enemies and endures.” He handed Billy the sprig of white and green. “Take a lesson from that. Let your feelings for Brett be stronger than all the doubts of others. You must outlast Orry. When you feel hope ebbing away, think of the laurel growing up here in the sun and storm. Hanging on. It’s the best advice I can offer you.”
Billy studied the leaves and the blossom for a moment. He wanted to smile but somehow could not. His voice was heavy with emotion.
“Thank you. I’ll take it.” He put the sprig in his pocket.
All the light had left the sky. Stars by the thousand spread overhead. Presently, laughing and chatting companionably, the brothers started down the path. They disappeared in the
darkness on the slope, where the laurel still tossed with a sound like that of a murmuring sea.
41
OLD POLITICAL LOYALTIES CONTINUED to crumble away that autumn. Buck Buchanan finally got the chance to run for President on the Democratic ticket. Cameron, although still at odds with his old colleague, felt it might damage his carefully built machine if he joined the Republicans, as so many in the North and West were doing. So during the fall of 1856, he politicked under the banner of something called the Union party, while listening privately to proposals for an alliance. Republicans such as David Wilmot said they would support Cameron for a Senate seat if he threw in with them. Stanley worked loyally for Boss Cameron without knowing what the man stood for, other than what Stanley perceived as Cameron’s own self-interest.
In South Carolina, Huntoon continued to proclaim his views from public platforms. He feared the rising power of the Republicans but was nearly as disenchanted with Buchanan, who purported to champion noninterference with slavery in the states and yet endorsed the Douglas doctrine in the territories. How could the South survive under either party? Huntoon asked in his speeches. It could not; secession was the only answer. Huntoon closed every address by raising his arm dramatically and offering a toast.
“To the sword! The arbiter of national disputes. The sooner it is unsheathed to maintain Southern rights, the better!”
The toast always produced loud applause and was widely quoted in the South Carolina press. The Mercury christened him Young Hotspur. Ashton was thrilled and deemed it a significant advance in her husband’s career. A man could tell that he had achieved fame when the public began referring to him as Old This or Young That.
