North and South Trilogy

by John Jakes

  “A pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Fenway,” said Leverett Dawkins, enthroned in his special office chair. “How might the Palmetto Bank be of service this morning?”

  Ashton sat with perfect posture on the edge of his visitor’s chair. The careful way she drew her shoulders back emphasized the line of her full bosom, something the banker did not miss. She watched his eyes slide upward to her face—the poor fool obviously thought his attention had gone undetected—and she knew she had the advantage. She was familiar with Dawkins’s name but she had never met him; therefore he would never associate her with the Main family.

  Outwardly composed but inwardly straining, she said, “I want to inquire about property in the district. I have old family ties in South Carolina. I treasure the Charleston area and I would like to have a home here.”

  “I see. Go on, please.”

  “When I was driving on the Ashley River road the day before yesterday, I saw a lovely plantation that captured my heart. I’ve been back twice since then to observe it, and my feeling remains the same. I hoped you would be able to tell me something about the property.”

  “To which plantation do you refer, ma’am?”

  “I was told the name of it is Mont Royal.”

  “Ah, the Main plantation,” he said, leaning back. “The owner is Mr. Cooper Main of this city.”

  Hearing her brother’s name startled and confused Ashton. Fortunately her heavy black veil hid her momentary disarray. She recovered, saying smoothly, “I thought a woman controlled the place—”

  “You’re referring to the owner’s sister-in-law, Mrs. Orry Main.” Ashton noted a certain distaste when he said that. “Yes. She lives there by arrangement with Mr. Main. She’s a sort of resident manager, responsible for the operation of Mont Royal. But Mr. Main holds the title.”

  Carefully: “Might the plantation be available for sale?”

  He thought it over. He considered what he knew of Cooper’s feelings about the Negro school, and his hatred of Madeline Main’s complicity in the marriage of his daughter to the Yankee. Dawkins’s visitor raised a new and most interesting possibility, one in which he saw a dual advantage. Profit, and ridding the bank of a relationship that had grown irksome.

  “There is a substantial mortgage on Mont Royal,” he said. “Held by this institution.”

  She already knew that, but didn’t let on. “Oh, what luck! Do you suppose the owner, this Mister, ah—”

  “Main,” he prompted.

  “Would he sell if the mortgage could be paid off as part of the transaction?”

  “Naturally I can’t speak for him, but it’s always a possibility. If you would be interested in making an offer, the bank would be happy to act as your representative. For a fee, of course.”

  “Of course. I’d insist on it. And upon some other conditions as well. My husband, Mr. Fenway, is a wealthy man. In fact, he’s richer than Midas. Do you know Fenway’s Piano Company?”

  “Who does not? Is that your husband? Well, well.”

  “If Mr. Main found out who was trying to buy his plantation, he might inflate the price unreasonably.”

  “We can make sure that doesn’t happen. If we act in your behalf, you can maintain complete anonymity until the sale is consummated.” That pleased her, he saw. “You mentioned conditions in the plural—”

  Her heart was beating so hard, she almost shook. Here it was—the chance for the perfect reprisal she’d dreamed about for years. Fighting to keep tension from her voice, she said, “I would want the sale to be completed very quickly. Within a matter of a few days. I would want to take title, and possession, before I return to Chicago.”

  He frowned for the first time. “What you ask is irregular, Mrs. Fenway. And difficult.”

  She sat back, as if withdrawing her friendliness. “Then I’m sorry—”

  “Difficult,” he repeated, swiftly raising one hand. “But not impossible. We would bend every effort.”

  “Excellent,” she said, relaxing. “That’s just excellent. Perhaps we can move on to specifics? A suggested offering price. Please name the figure. Not unreasonable, mind. But high enough to be irresistible to this Mr. Cooper Main. That’s the magic word, Mr. Dawkins.”

  She lifted the black veil slowly to let him gaze on her sweet poison smile. He was entranced by the wet gleam of her lips and the even white beauty of her teeth as she whispered to him:

  “Irresistible.”

  Book Seven

  Crossing Jordan

  I DO NOT BELIEVE that the whites can now, or will live under a rule where persons so entirely ignorant, so venal, so corrupt, have the management of their State government. … I think they will bear as long as they can but there will be a point beyond which they cannot bear.

  GENERAL WADE HAMPTON, 1871

  66

  “IT’S FROM SAM. IN New York. My letter was sent on from St. Louis.”

  “What does he say?”

  She scanned the page. “He was surprised to learn I was in South Carolina. He sends you his wishes for a quick recovery. He’ll be happy to give the bride away as long as the ceremony doesn’t interfere with a regular performance. What performance?” She turned the sheet over. “Oh, my. This is rather hard to take.”

  “What?”

  “Claudius Wood liked Sam’s Othello. He imported the production to fill a spot in his schedule and it turned into a huge hit. Sam says it’s to run indefinitely at the New Knickerbocker. Eddie Booth’s seen it twice. Oh, that is ironic. Sam working for the man who almost killed me.”

  She tossed down Trump’s letter; it, too, had been forwarded from St. Louis.

  “You sound angry.”

  “Well, yes. I should be more tolerant. Sam’s an actor, which means he’s quite like a little child in some ways. Children’s wishes are often stronger than their loyalties. Sam constantly wished for this kind of success—which is bad luck in the theater—so naturally it eluded him. Then when he wasn’t looking for it, it arrived. It’s foolish to expect him to turn his back on it. He’s an actor.”

  “I think you said that.”

  “I did, but it explains everything. We’ll just have to be married on whatever day the Knickerbocker is dark. That is, if you still—”

  “I do. Come here.”

  Yellow light, summer light, painted the ceiling and the whitewashed wall behind the head of his bed. Work on the new house was ending for the day. Someone drove a last nail into a roof beam; the nailhead sang like a bell at each blow.

  In the distance he heard the mill saw whining as it cut. He heard the shouts and the cracking whips of the muleteers driving their carts in the phosphate fields. Nearer, in the main room of the whitewashed house, Madeline and Willa were chatting about supper. They’d gotten along wonderfully from the day he and Willa arrived with the portrait of Madeline’s mother in their luggage. Madeline wept when she saw the picture.

  Warm in a new blue flannel nightshirt Willa had cut and sewn for him, Charles lay staring at the ceiling. The slatted shutters broke the wash of light into a pleasantly regular pattern. A large undefined area of his lower back, the left side, still hurt. But not as badly as before. He was getting better.

  Red Bear and four of his Cheyennes had taken him to Camp Supply, unconscious. There a surgeon probed for the bullet without finding it. An Army ambulance delivered him to Duncan at Leavenworth. Gus was safe there, although Charles was too delirious to know it immediately. The brigadier telegraphed the playhouse, and Willa rushed to Kansas by train. During the three weeks in which she tended Charles and shared Maureen’s bed, Sam Trump and company closed Trump’s St. Louis Playhouse and decamped to New York.

  At Leavenworth, a contract surgeon tried to find the bullet. He failed. Day before yesterday, hoping to alleviate Charles’s pain, a lanky freedman named Leander had made the third attempt. Leander said he’d been doctoring most of his adult life; he’d been the only source of medical help for fellow slaves on a Savannah River cotton plantation. Charles tol
d him to go ahead, even though he knew the procedure could end in death.

  Leander gave Charles a stick wrapped with a whiskey-soaked rag. While Charles bit down, crazy with pain, Leander cut into the wound using a flame-purified knife. Evidently Scar’s lump of lead had shifted recently. Leander found it quickly and removed it with a loop of baling wire.

  Beyond the half-closed door, a third voice, smaller, thinner, interposed between those of the women. Charles inhaled the musky damp of the marshlands, felt the faint tickle of pine pollen at the back of his throat. Every year, regular as God’s wrath, it dusted every surface yellow-green. He was home.

  It wasn’t the completely happy experience he’d anticipated when he persuaded Willa to accompany him to Mont Royal for the lengthy recuperation. Madeline was rebuilding the great house in Orry’s memory, but the plantation had undergone many changes that struck him as foreign and crass. Nothing was gracious any more. It was all steam engines and dug-up rice fields.

  Madeline was estranged from Cooper and ostracized by the white families of the district. An organization he knew little about, the Kuklux, had terrorized the district for a while. Klansmen had murdered Andy Sherman, whom he remembered as a slave without a last name. They’d killed a white schoolteacher, too. The sweet lonely melody of home that he had whistled for years was somehow off-key, inappropriate.

  And then there was the problem of the boy who no longer knew how to smile.

  Gus remained a polite child. Carrying a little round hat with a floppy brim that Willa had bought for him in Leavenworth, he came into the bedroom quietly. His feet, in rope-and-leather sandals, left a trail of water spots. Willa must have insisted that he wash after he came in from playing. But he still had mud between his toes.

  Gus stood by his father’s bed. “Are you feeling all right, Pa?”

  “Much better today. Would you pour me a drink of water?”

  The little boy put his hat on the bed and juggled the cup and large china pitcher. The water gurgled into the cup. Gus watched the stream carefully. On the boy’s right cheek, Bent’s cut was hardening into scar tissue; a dark ridge in a sun-washed landscape.

  Gus touched the scar often but never mentioned it, or the whole dark period of the whiskey ranch. Willa, who granted that she was no expert on mental problems, nevertheless thought common sense dictated silence on the matter for a while yet.

  Gus handed the cup to his father. The water was tepid. “Guess what I saw down by the sawmill, Pa.”

  “What?” Charles said.

  “A big white bird with legs like sticks. This long. He was standing in the water but he flew away.”

  “Egret,” Charles said.

  “Guess what else I saw. I saw some other birds flying in a line. I counted five. The first one would do this”—he waved his arms up and down—“and the others did it, too. When the first one stopped, they stopped. They had funny mouths, big mouths.” He stuck out his lips. “They flew that way.” He pointed seaward.

  “Brown pelicans, maybe. Pretty far upriver. Did you like seeing them?”

  “Yes, I liked it.” There wasn’t a jot of pleasure in the reply, or even the slightest smile on the small, well-formed mouth, which always reminded Charles of Augusta Barclay’s. How long would it be until the boy didn’t hurt any more? Forever?

  “I’m hungry now,” Gus said, and left.

  Charles turned his head away from the door. Familiar guilt lapped at him, a kind of stomach-sickness. He pictured the scar. I let it happen.

  He had a lot to do to make up for it. I have to leave him something better than scars when he grows up. He knew of nothing so valuable as money. The simple repayments of fatherly affection and attention—of course he’d make those. They were not enough, though. Not nearly enough. Because of the scars—the visible one and the ones hidden within.

  After dark, when the pond frogs and chuck-will’s-widows tuned up for their nightly concert, Willa came in and sat with him, Charles set the lamp wick higher, to see her better. Her hair shone like white gold.

  “I’m still searching for that place for us,” she said. “I don’t care where it is; I’ll go anywhere with you.”

  “What about being an actress? You don’t want to give that up, do you?”

  She wiped a smudge of flour from her thumb. “No, but I will.” She studied him. “Wait. You’re thinking of something—”

  He pushed himself back, straightening, shifting the pillow behind his shoulders. His hair showed a lot of gray now. He’d shaved his mustache and beard, and Madeline and Willa both said he looked ten years younger. “I thought of it day before yesterday, just before Leander cut me and I fainted. Texas. I loved Texas. I learned soldiering, so I don’t see why I couldn’t learn ranching.”

  “You mean raise cattle?”

  “That’s right. I could build a house for us, and put together a herd. The beef market’s good. More and more cattle are shipped east all the time.”

  “I’ve never seen Texas,” she said.

  “Pretty godforsaken in some parts. But others are beautiful.”

  “What would we do for money? I haven’t saved much.”

  “I could go to work for someone else till I learn the business and put a hunk aside.”

  She brought her warm mouth against his and kissed him lightly but firmly. “You’ll have to save a lot. I want a huge old house. I want to raise Gus with brothers and sisters.”

  “I’ll do it, Willa.” Some liveliness animated his voice at last. “The truth is, I want to be rich.” To pay for the scars. “We could settle near some town of decent size, so that, when the money comes in, I can build you a theater. An opera house of your very own.”

  She hugged him. “Charles, that’s a lovely dream. I think you’ll do it, too.”

  He watched the shadows of a woman and a boy outside the partly closed door. He heard Gus ask Madeline a question.

  “I promise I will,” he said.

  Early June in the Low Country. Even sweeter and brighter than Ashton remembered. Warm air not yet tainted by the sickening humidity of full summer. A pure blue sky conveying a sense of repose, even languor.

  The matched team was the color of milk. Each horse sported a white pompon fitted to the headstall. The carriage was a barouche with gleaming lacquered side panels. Before leaving Charleston, Ashton had insisted that the two black men in threadbare livery fold the top down.

  She sat facing forward in the hired rig. Patterns of sun and shadow from the trees passed rhythmically over her face. Her dark eyes had a liquid look. Surrounded by the sights and scents of her childhood, she found herself struggling against a messy sentimentality.

  Opposite her, oblivious to the charms of the scene, sat Favor Herrington, Esquire, a Charleston lawyer recommended to her when she said she wanted someone who put success ahead of professional ethics.

  Mr. Herrington’s appearance and demeanor were unimpressive. A pale, slight man of thirty-five or so, he had a mustache so small and fine, it resembled an accidental pen stroke. Below his lower lip, which receded, something resembling a lump of dough substituted for a chin. Herrington’s thick ’Geechee accent was, in Ashton’s opinion, decidedly inferior to her own cultivated Charleston speech. Nevertheless, at their first meeting, the lawyer had fawned and “Yes, ma’amed” her with such juicy extravagance that she immediately recognized one of her own kind. Underneath his airs, he was unscrupulous.

  Ashton remembered this part of the road. Something dried her throat. “Slow down, driver. That’s the turn ahead.”

  Herrington fastened the brass latch on the old leather case containing all the papers. He straightened his cravat as the barouche turned up the long lane. Through the cloudy black of the veil Ashton lowered over her eyes, she saw the raw yellow framing of the new Mont Royal.

  Why—the house was huge!

  All the better.

  “I have the honor to present you with these documents,” Favor Herrington said. “Bill of sale, closing statement, de
ed—and this, to which you’ll want to pay special attention.”

  Ashton’s lawyer had expected to find the buxom mulatto woman, to whom he was addressing his remarks. But he hadn’t anticipated the presence of the man with powerful hands and weathered skin who limped out in his blue nightshirt as Madeline confronted the visitors on the shady lawn. Nor did Herrington know who the pert young woman with pale blond hair was. Perhaps the man’s companion.

  The barouche stood nearby. The two black men in livery patted and soothed the white horses. Charles warily watched the woman sitting motionless in the rear seat. She wore burgundy velvet and a heavy black veil. There was something forbidding about her. Something that reminded him of—what?

  With a stunned expression, Madeline took the blue-covered document Herrington had presented last. “That is an eviction order,” the lawyer said pleasantly. “Yesterday, at the Palmetto Bank, the mortgage on Mont Royal plantation was liquidated and title to the property was sold to my client.” He indicated the veiled woman.

  Madeline shot Charles a bewildered look. She turned over page after page of finely inscribed clauses. She found a name. “Mrs. W. P. Fenway. I don’t know any Mrs. Fenway.”

  “Why, my dear, you most certainly do,” said the woman in the barouche. She wore mauve gloves, and the little finger of each was elevated slightly. Her hands were graceful as floating birds as she lifted the veil.

  “I never expected to lay eyes on you, Cousin Charles.” Ashton stood on the coarse grass near the whitewashed house. Spite bubbled in her dark eyes. “Wherever have you been all these years? You look ever so much older.”

  He could say the same about her. Still, her beauty remained undimmed, almost perfect. Not much of a surprise in that. He could remember her long ago, avoiding the sunshine, fussing for hours, alone, before she appeared in a new party dress. Her looks had always counted for a lot. Evidently they still did. It was her eyes that gave away the changes wrought by time. The haughty, hard eyes. Where had she been? What had she seen and done?