by John Jakes
What came over her there at the rail was not merely a realization of this new goal but an awareness that her behavior had better be more calculated if she was to reach it. Huntoon had important connections. She must react to that fact, no matter how she felt about him personally. Billy was the summer, but Huntoon was the future.
So when the Mains left the steamer, she contrived to take her father’s arm because she knew he’d go straight to Rhett and the others. He did. When she reached Huntoon, she greeted him with a bold kiss on the cheek.
“James! I’ve missed you so.”
“You have? That’s marvelous.”
It’s a lie, too. But she merely thought that.
She was pleased with herself for showing all of them where her interest and her loyalty lay. Let Brett run to Cooper and hug him, as she was doing now. Brett made no difference; she’d never amount to a row of beans anyway. Ashton waved casually at her brother from a distance.
At Belvedere one evening in early October, Constance said to George, “Dear, do you recall that shed at the back of the factory property?”
He pushed aside the sheet on which he had been writing. He was developing a plan for quick expansion of the rail mill. In September the Federal government had for the first time granted public lands to railroads, to stimulate construction of new routes. George paid a sizable monthly retainer to a Washington lawyer whose duties included alerting his client to decisions affecting the iron trade. When reporting on the grants, the lawyer had also predicted that many similar ones would eventually be made throughout the West and South. To George that signaled a boom market in rails for the next ten, possibly twenty years.
He realized Constance had been quiet a long time before she asked the question. Something important was on her mind.
The parlor and the house were still. A gilt clock ticked. After ten already. He rose and stretched. “The shed where we formerly stored tools,” he said with a nod. “What about it?”
“Would you be willing to let me use it?”
“You? Whatever for?”
She didn’t give a direct answer. “I wouldn’t use it often. But I would want you to know what might happen there.”
“Good Lord, I’ve never heard such mystery. What’s going on?”
He was smiling, but she was frowning, as if worried about his reaction. She hurried to him.
“Let me show you. Come with me.”
“Where ?”
“To the shed.”
“Right now?”
“Yes. Please.”
Curiosity and the seriousness of her expression led to quick consent. A few minutes later they were climbing a sloping road at the back of the factory property. The air was cold, the sky cloudless. The shed stood out clearly in the starlight.
George stopped suddenly, pointing. A gleam of yellow showed between pieces of siding that didn’t quite meet.
“Someone’s in there.”
“Yes, I know.” She took his hand. “It’s perfectly safe. Come on.”
“You know?” he queried, pulled along. “Will you kindly explain what this is all—”
“Mr. Belzer?” she whispered at the shed door. “It’s Constance. You must move the lantern. It can be seen from outside.”
The light in the gap faded. Belzer was a storekeeper from the village, a Quaker. What in God’s name was he doing here? The door opened, and George saw the frail, nervous merchant. Beyond him, wrapped in old blankets, he spied a second figure, one whose appearance shocked him and explained everything.
The young man wrapped in the blanket was probably not yet twenty, but fright and emaciation made him look twice that. He had amber-brown skin.
“We didn’t have any other place to conceal him,” Belzer said to George. “He came to my house early this morning. But it’s no longer safe for me to keep—travelers. Too many know of my involvement. This afternoon hiding the boy became imperative. An agent of the new district commissioner arrived in Lehigh Station.”
Belzer referred to the Federal fugitive-slave commissioner. President Fillmore had signed the bill on September 18, and the machinery for enforcement was rapidly being put in place.
The runaway sniffled, then sneezed twice. George turned to his wife, still feeling stunned. “How long have you been involved in this work?”
“Mr. Belzer approached me in the spring. I’ve been helping ever since.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“Don’t be angry, George. I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”
“You know my feelings about slavery. But evading or obstructing the new law is a serious offense. If you’re caught, you could go to prison.”
Constance indicated the shivering boy. “And where will he go if he’s caught? Right back to North Carolina. Back to God knows what brutal punishment.”
“Why did you decide to involve yourself?”
“Because the slave owners now have all the advantages. The Federal commissioners are supposed to judge cases impartially. Yet the new law pays them ten dollars for every slave they return, and five for each one they don’t. Impartial? It’s a farce.”
“It was a compromise,” George replied.
Belzer sounded almost antagonistic as he said, “You may call it whatever you like, Mr. Hazard, but the new law remains an offense to God and the conscience of this land. Constance, I’m sorry if I caused trouble between you and your husband. I believe we misjudged him. I will try to locate another place for Abner.”
Stung, George blurted, “Wait. “The others looked at him. “I didn’t say no, did I?”
Hope replaced anger in his wife’s eyes. She ran to him. “All we need are some staples and extra blankets, a padlock for the door, and one or two ‘no trespassing’ signs to warn people away. If I spend money for anything beyond that, I’ll tell you. Otherwise, you needn’t worry about what goes on here.”
“Not worry about an underground railroad station on my own property? I disagree.” He gnawed his lower lip. “Why on earth do you want to use this particular place?”
Belzer answered. “It’s isolated, and it can be approached through the woods farther up the hill. The—ah—passengers can arrive and leave for Canada virtually undetected.”
For perhaps fifteen seconds George stared at the sniffling, undernourished runaway. He knew he had no choice.
“All right, but I must impose some conditions for everyone’s protection and—”
He didn’t have a chance to finish: Constance flung her arms around him and began kissing him while Belzer murmured reassurances to Abner, who grinned and then doubled over in a fit of sneezing.
George was proud of what Constance had done. They took Maude into their confidence. All three agreed that no one else in the family should be told about the station. Stanley and Isabel would object because Stanley wanted no involvement with controversy. Lately he was spending only two or three days a week at home. The rest of the time he was courting new friends in Harrisburg or Philadelphia.
A power struggle had developed within the state Democratic party. It pitted Stanley’s friend Cameron against the acknowledged head of the party, Buck Buchanan of Lancaster. After serving as Polk’s secretary of state, Buchanan had wanted the 1848 presidential nomination. He blamed Cameron’s machinations for his failure to get it. The men were now disavowing each other publicly. Stanley had cast his lot with Cameron, which George thought foolish.
But who could be sure in a period in which party loyalties, and the parties themselves, seemed to change overnight? Recently a new political entity had emerged, the Free Soil party. This militant group was a coalition of anti-cotton Whigs, former members of the Liberty party, and some Barn Burners, the name given to hard-line, anti-slavery Democrats. In George’s opinion the Free Soilers seemed dedicated to throwing out the baby with the bath water. They said that if the price of national expansion was acceptance of slavery in new territories, they would stand foursquare against creation of those territories. Virgilia atte
nded every Free Soil caucus within the state; every one, that is, at which women were permitted in the gallery. She wrote lengthy memorials demanding that women be allowed to sit on the main floor as participants.
She was another from whom the three conspirators wanted to conceal the existence of the underground railroad station. She would approve of it, of course, but she might also talk too freely. There were many men working at Hazard’s who remained anti-Negro, and violently so. Freed blacks would threaten such men by competing for their jobs. George wished that kind of hatred didn’t exist at the ironworks, but he also knew no government could legislate it out of existence because it was rooted in fear; illogical. Nor could it be quickly overcome with appeals to conscience. It would take a generation or so and plenty of education to do away with such attitudes permanently.
“I don’t imagine it would be wise to tell your Southern friends, either,” Constance said.
George frowned. “You say that as if there’s something not quite decent about them. I assumed they were your friends, too.”
“Oh, of course,” she said hastily. “It’s just that I’m not as close to the Mains as you are. If I had to choose between pleasing Orry and helping Joel Belzer, my choice might not be to your liking.”
She wasn’t trying to bait or annoy him, he realized; she was speaking honestly. Still, the words rankled within him. Maude noted the fact and examined her hands.
“Why say something like that?” George snapped. “You won’t have to make that kind of choice, ever.”
But he wasn’t sure of the statement, and that uncertainty, with its grim implications, was the real cause of his concern, his irritability.
27
“PETTIAUGER,” CHARLES SAID. HE held up the object he had been carving. With the tip of his bowie he indicated a long groove he had been deepening in the wood. “It’s a Carolina river dugout. Down in Louisiana I think it’s called a pirogue.”
Four-year-old Laban Hazard sat at Charles’s feet on the front steps of Fairlawn. The boy worshiped Charles and had been waiting an entire year to see him. The Mains had arrived in Newport that morning.
Laban’s twin brother appeared at the corner of the house, rolling a hoop. He pointed to the boat. “That for Laban?”
Charles nodded.
Levi looked sour. “I want one.”
Charles chuckled. Levi seemed to have inherited his mother’s disposition. “All right,” Charles said. “As soon as I finish this one.”
Levi stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. “Make mine first.”
Charles pointed the knife at him. “You mind your manners, Mr. Yankee, or I’ll stick you on a spit and cook you for supper.”
He said it jokingly, but Levi screamed and fled. Laban laughed and leaned against his idol’s knee. Billy emerged from the house.
“Froggy going a-courting so soon?” Charles asked. “The girls won’t even be unpacked.”
Billy ignored him and fussed with his cravat. Charles whistled.
“Me oh my, look at that jacket. I don’t recall you dressing up so fancy last summer. It surely must be love—”
Billy grinned. “Go to hell. Laban, don’t tell your father I cussed in front of you.”
And away he went. Halfway down the lawn he broke into a run. He vaulted the brick wall, startling the masons who were once again repairing the mortar.
Young womanhood had touched Brett Main that spring. Will he notice? she wondered as she examined her mirrored image and tried to force her small breasts to greater prominence by tugging her dress and undergarments downward from the waist.
Behind her, Ashton exclaimed in delight:
“Oh, mercy. He’s here already! I can hear him talking to Orry.”
She went down the staircase with the speed and display of a Fourth of July rocket. Brett was only a few steps behind her. It made no difference. By the time Brett was halfway down the stairs, Orry had left the foyer, and Billy and Ashton were racing out of the house without so much as a glance in her direction.
She walked the rest of the way to the bottom. From behind, a hand touched her shoulder. She squealed and jumped.
“Papa!”
“I thought you’d be resting, missy.”
Tillet noticed a tear on his daughter’s cheek. With a little groan and a pop of knee joints, he sat on the lowest step and drew her down beside him. He put his arms around her.
“Why so unhappy?”
“It’s that Billy Hazard. He’s the most stuck-up person I’ve ever met. I wanted to say hello, but he wouldn’t even look at me.”
“Don’t be too hard on the lad. He’s got a case for your sister. I think it’s mutual.”
“She always gets anything she wants! She’ll get him too, won’t she?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They’re both mighty young for any discussions of matri—missy, come back. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
But she had already bolted upstairs, her wail of misery echoing behind her.
Billy and Ashton went straight to the rock where they had kissed last summer. The instant Ashton felt Billy’s arms around her and the sweet, shy pressure of his lips, practical considerations melted away.
What a lot of time she’d wasted on all those deep plans made last year after she had looked down from the rail of the steamer and seen Mr. Bob Rhett snub her brother. The plans and the pathetic Huntoon were now completely forgotten. She’d marry Billy and no one else.
That could fit into her larger scheme, though. The Hazards might be Yankees, but they were rich and prominent. She must let Billy know about her ambitions. But not right this minute. All she wanted to do now was savor her surrender to love and to him.
She squeezed him hard, so he’d be sure to feel her breasts. “I never thought I could miss anyone so much. I just died waiting weeks for each of your letters.”
“I’m a bad writer. For every one I sent, I tore up ten.”
“You can make up for it now, sweet. Kiss me, and don’t you dare stop till I’m ready to faint.” He obliged with enthusiasm.
A mantle of false peace enfolded the two families and the nation in that summer of 1851. Most Americans were exhausted from the war and the wrangling over the slave issue. Even if the Compromise of 1850 had achieved no permanent solutions, people were prepared to act as if it had. Some loud voices on both sides continued to proclaim that little had been changed and nothing solved; a cancer hidden by bandages remained a cancer. But the James Huntoons and Virgilia Hazards had trouble promoting their militant views during those warm, gentle months. The majority of Americans wanted a respite, at least for a season or two.
Cooper and Judith had been married on the first of June 1850, and nature had quickly interfered with Cooper’s plan to visit Britain. Exactly nine months after the wedding, Judith delivered Judah Tillet Main—or J.T., as his proud grandfather called him from the moment he first heard of his arrival. In late July 1851, the parents, the baby, and a wet nurse traveled to Newport to spend ten days with the Mains.
A few hours after the group arrived, Tillet seated himself in a rocker on the porch of the rented house. Cooper sat down next to him. Tillet gazed proudly at his grandson, who was resting in a blanket in Cooper’s arms. Judith was out on the lawn, playing ninepins with George, Billy, and Ashton. Their shadows were long in the twilight.
Tillet cleared his throat. “Your wife is a fine woman.”
Cooper was overwhelmed. Never before had his father paid her a compliment. “Thank you, sir. I agree.” He folded a corner of the blanket to protect the top of his son’s head from the breeze.
Tillet leaned back and laced his fingers over his paunch. It grew larger every year. How old he looks, Cooper thought. What is he now? Fifty-five? No, fifty-six. It shows in the wrinkles in his skin. It shows in his eyes. He knows it’s nearly over for him. For the first time in a long while, Cooper felt an outpouring of love for his father. Love without reservation or qualification.
But Tillet had a qualificatio
n, which he stated a moment later. “I can praise Judith without agreeing with everything she says. I don’t, you know. Still—families shouldn’t fight amongst themselves.”
“I agree, sir.” But it’s damn hard to achieve that ideal in these times.
“You’ve done well with the company,” his father continued. “In fact your record is outstanding. Mont Royal’s a beautiful thing—yes, I know, a resounding commercial success as well.”
“We could use three more like her, to handle all the business we’re being offered. I’m looking into it. And something else. I’ve been asked to design and build ships for others. I’m looking into that, too.”
Tillet scratched his chin. “Do you think it’s wise to expand so rapidly?”
“Yes, sir, I do. I think we stand to make a larger and more dependable income from ship construction than from carrying cotton.”
“Is all of this just conversation or is there substance to it?”
“If you’re asking whether I have firm commitments, I do. One from a shipping line in Savannah, another from a Baltimore company. Some points are still being negotiated, but each firm definitely wants a vessel like Mont Royal—if I can provide them. I surely intend to try.”
He leaned forward enthusiastically. “I envision a day, maybe as little as five years from now, when Main steamers will be shuttling up and down the East Coast and to Europe under the flags of a dozen companies. The cotton market may shrink eventually, but I’m convinced the demand for cargo space and fast delivery of all sorts of goods will only grow during our lifetimes.”
“During mine, perhaps. Long-term, I wouldn’t venture a guess. The Yankee politicians are unpredictable. Greedy and tricky as—ah, but let’s not get onto that and spoil everything. I am frankly awed by the reputation you’ve established with just one vessel.”
“Mont Royal incorporates a great many innovations. Two small ones are mine. I patented them.”
“Why couldn’t these other cargo lines get a ship by going directly to that yard in Brooklyn?”
