by John Jakes
“They could, but they want something more. They want me to supervise the planning and construction. Quite by accident, I’ve become a Southern expert on shipbuilding. There aren’t many.” Cooper smiled then. “You know the definition of an expert, don’t you? Someone from out of town.”
Tillet laughed. The noise roused his grandson, who started to cry. Cooper caressed the delicate, warm cheek until the baby was quiet again.
“Don’t be overly modest about your accomplishments,” Tillet told his son. “You’ve worked hard in Charleston—I’ve heard that from any number of sources—and you’re still at it. Just look at the reading you brought along on your vacation. Naval architecture, metallurgy—books I can barely lift, let alone understand.”
Cooper shrugged, but he was basking in the sudden and unexpected praise. “As part of that learning process, we’re finally going to Britain in November.”
“My grandson too?”
“Yes, all of us. The doctor said Judah could travel with the wet nurse. Brunel’s granted me an interview. Imagine spending an hour with that man. His talent—the breadth of his imagination—incredible. He and his father built the tunnel under the Thames River, did you know that?”
“No, but why does anyone need a tunnel under a river? What’s wrong with ferryboats? Or bridges? For that matter, why does anyone need faster ships? I remember something the Duke of Wellington said about railroads in Europe. He said they would only promote social unrest by enabling the lower classes to move about. I feel that way about all the newfangled things coming along these days. Too revolutionary!”
“The precise word, Father. We are in the middle of a revolution—a peaceful revolution of industry and invention.”
“We should stop it for a while.”
“It can’t be done. Nor can you go backward. The only possible direction is forward.”
“Don’t sound as if you enjoy it so much!” Then Tillet sighed. “Ah, well—let’s not get into that, either. You’re certainly entitled to a trip. But you’ve earned more than that, and I’ve been meaning to say something to you.” Again he cleared his throat. “I’ve instructed the family lawyers to prepare documents changing the ownership structure of C.S.C. Henceforward you will control fifty-one percent of the company stock—and receive an equivalent percentage of the profits, free and clear. I have read every report you’ve sent me. At the rate you’re generating income, under the new arrangement you’ll soon be a very wealthy man. Self-made. That, too, is a distinction.”
After a long moment, Cooper overcame his surprise enough to say, “I don’t know how to thank you. For your show of faith. Or for your generosity.”
Tillet waved. “You’re my son. You gave your firstborn my name. That’s thanks enough. Families shouldn’t fight.”
He said it a little more poignantly this time. A plea? A warning? I hope that’s not it, Cooper thought. I hope he isn’t trying to ensure my silence or agreement with his views. I love him, but I can’t be bought.
Then he wondered if he was being ungrateful. He wanted to ask Tillet exactly what he meant by the remark about families fighting, but he was unwilling to disturb the tranquillity of the evening. Like the tranquillity of the nation, it was fragile. It would not last.
Both families embraced the summer happily. A relaxed and mellow mood prevailed, a mood that everyone worked to maintain. Even Constance and Isabel had short conversations occasionally.
Talk of national issues was banned by mutual agreement—violated only once. Virgilia, her constraint overcome one evening by too much wine, denounced the latest public pronouncements of William Yancey, the Georgia-born lawyer and former congressman who had become the spiritual heir to Calhoun’s most extreme views. The South still held a grudge against Senator Seward of New York. Seward had defended the Wilmot Proviso by saying it fulfilled a law higher than the Constitution, God’s law, which would one day prevail against slavery. Yancey verbally lashed the senator from a lecture platform. When Virgilia read of it, she called Yancey a lot of names, including whoremonger. Before long she was substituting the South for Yancey. Orry exploded:
“What a marvelous storehouse of righteousness you’ve built here in the North, Virgilia. All the sin is below the Mason and Dixon Line—and never mind that I just read about Iowa’s posting harsh penalties for any free Negro who dares set foot in the state. All the hypocrisy is down South, too—never mind that California, which your politicians worked so diligently to drag into the Union as a free state, is sending pro-slavery men to the Senate. You never admit to things like that. You ignore them and just keep spouting invective!”
He threw his napkin aside and left the table. Ten minutes later George cornered his sister and yelled at her until she promised to apologize. With great reluctance, she did.
Except for that one lapse, the warm, euphoric days remained peaceful. Brett delighted everyone with her piano rendition of Foster’s new song, “Old Folks at Home.” George proved to be an unbeatable ninepins champion. There was a lively front-porch discussion of the current effort by some preachers to ban Mr. Hawthorne’s racy novel The Scarlet Letter. One cleric called its publication “the brokerage of lust.”
Isabel and Tillet agreed that such trash should be proscribed by law. George replied that anyone who made such a statement didn’t understand free speech. Clarissa said timidly that although the novel did sound salacious, she believed George might be right in principle. “Woman,” Tillet roared, “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Fortunately, further argument was forestalled by the appearance of Ashton, Billy, and Cousin Charles on the lawn of the Mains’ house.
The young people were bound for the beach. They went there almost every evening, with Charles the token chaperone. That amused Orry. Charles had reformed, but it was still a bit like hiring the devil to do missionary work.
George watched the young people stroll out of sight in the moonlight. Then he said to Orry, “I get the impression that your sister has set her cap for Billy.”
“George, not so fast,” Constance exclaimed, not entirely teasing. “Next summer Billy goes to the Academy. For four years.”
“Nevertheless,” Orry put in, “I think George is right.”
He didn’t bother to say that he doubted there would ever be a match. Ashton was too mercurial. Of course, like Charles, she could change. With that possibility in mind, he added, “You ought to bring Billy to South Carolina.”
“Yes, we’d love to have you—all of you,” Clarissa said. Seated apart from them at the end of the porch, Virgilia looked skeptical.
“I’d love to see Mont Royal,” Constance said.
Orry leaned forward. “Why not this fall? October’s one of our loveliest months. Cooper would be happy to show you Charleston, then you could come upriver for a long visit.”
“All right, we’ll do it,” George said after Constance squeezed his hand to encourage him.
A moment later he had second thoughts. Virgilia was watching and listening with great interest. If they took her along, the Mains would probably come to regret their offer of hospitality.
Charles leaned back against the damp rock, moonlight splashing his closed eyelids as he imagined naked thighs in various pleasing shades of pink and brown. One pair of thighs belonged to a plump and cooperative girl named Cynthia Lackey. Charles had met her during the first week of the summer, when he had gone to buy some hard candy in her father’s general store.
Away to his left he heard laughter. He opened his eyes and saw two figures emerging from the shadow of the bluff. Two figures that looked more like one. Arms around each other’s waist, they crossed the brilliantly lit sand.
“Watch out, there’s our chaperone,” Billy said. Ashton giggled. The single inky shape divided. Charles blinked away the last of his erotic visions. That didn’t relieve the tension in his groin. It was time to call on Cynthia again.
Ashton smoothed her hair. Billy tucked in the tail of his shirt. Charles felt sorry for his
friend. He had no specific information about Ashton’s experience, but he had suspicions. At minimum, she would be an expert tease, goading a suitor until he acquired a glassy-eyed look of frustration. Billy looked that way right now, Charles noticed.
On the way home, Ashton discussed plans for the following evening. Some clam digging first. Then a driftwood fire on the beach, and—
“I’m afraid we can’t do that tomorrow night,” Charles broke in. “Billy and I have a long-standing engagement at the other end of the island.”
Dumbfounded, Billy said, “We do? I don’t remember—” Charles elbowed him to silence.
Ashton pouted, then grew almost nastily insistent. Charles smiled and held firm. After Billy had seen Ashton to the door of the house on Beach Road, he came charging around to the side porch, where Charles sat in the moonlight, one long leg resting on the porch rail.
“What the devil is this fictitious engagement at the other end of the island?”
“My boy, it isn’t the least bit fictitious. I’m going to introduce you to Miss Cynthia Lackey and her sister Sophie. I have it on good authority that Sophie’s just as eager as Cynthia to please the boys and be pleased in turn. Have you ever had a girl before?”
“Of course.”
“How many?”
Under Charles’s steady stare, Billy wilted. “All right. I haven’t.”
“That’s what I thought. We’ll make it a summer to remember.”
He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Besides, I know cousin Ashton’s reputation for coquetry. I’ve left the two of you alone so much, I expect you need the relief of an evening with Miss Sophie.”
The following night they drove a pony cart to the Lackey place, a small farm in the open countryside. They drove back to Newport at two in the morning, with Billy thanking his friend and saying it was now a memorable summer indeed.
“But I want to see the South,” Virgilia said to George. “And they invited me.”
“They invited you because politeness required it, that’s all!” They had been back in Lehigh Station two days. This was their fourth argument about the trip. “They don’t want you down there insulting them and sneering at their way of life every waking moment,” George went on. “You’d probably parade this around Mont Royal.” He snatched up the broad satin ribbon she had brought into the study. She would be wearing the ribbon on Saturday when she marched in a Free Soil parade in Harrisburg. The ribbon bore the slogan of the party: Free soil—free speech—free labor—and free men. “Inviting you to come with us would be like carrying a torch into a dry forest, Virgilia. I’d be a fool to say yes.”
“What if I promise that I’ll be on my very best behavior? I feel it’s important for me to see the South firsthand. If you’ll take me, I’ll be good as gold. Not a word about free soil or anything else the Mains might find offensive.”
He peered at her through smoke curling from his cigar. “You mean that? You’d be polite the entire time?”
“Yes. I promise. I’ll swear it on a Bible, if you want.”
He managed to smile. “That won’t be necessary.” He shaped his mouth into an O and blew out a thin rod of smoke while weighing the risks. Then:
“All right. But at the first slip, I’ll send you home.”
She flung her arms around him and squealed her thanks. It had been a long time since she’d behaved in such a girlish way. For a moment he felt he had a sister again.
When Virgilia went to bed that night, she was too excited to go to sleep. But at last she did. She dreamed of black men’s bodies.
28
THE HAZARD PARTY CONSISTED of eight: Maude, George and Constance, the children, their nurse, and Billy and Virgilia. All but Billy were seasick on the stormy trip to Charleston. They rested a few days at Cooper’s house and improved rapidly.
After supper the second evening, Judith entertained them by playing the piano. Then she gathered the guests around her and they had a grand time for almost an hour, singing hymns and popular songs in a rousing way. Everyone took part except Virgilia, who excused herself and went to her room.
Mont Royal happened to be in port, loading cotton for New York. Cooper took them through the vessel, pointing out every detail from the sleek clipper bow to the advanced-design propeller. The visitors didn’t understand the engineering innovations as well as their host did, hence couldn’t be quite as enthusiastic, but all of them could appreciate the vessel’s exterior design. She was lean, graceful—unmistakably modern.
Next Cooper took them over to James Island, to the acreage he had bought earlier. “What I’m proposing to put here, using my profits from C.S.C. to do it, is a shipyard. A yard to build commercial vessels. A yard that will be the best on the East Coast.”
“You’re starting to sound like a Yankee,” said George. They both laughed.
Cooper and Judith showed them the sights of Charleston, including the marble marker at Calhoun’s grave in St. Philip’s churchyard. Then Cooper proposed to take any interested adults to a rally being sponsored by an organization calling itself the Charleston Southern Rights Coalition.
“Is that a political party?” George asked.
“Nobody’s sure,” Cooper answered. “Not yet, anyway. The traditional parties are disappearing faster than I can keep track of. ‘Whig’ and ‘Democrat’ have become virtually meaningless labels down here.”
“What has replaced the regular parties?” Virgilia wanted to know.
“Groups that fall into two camps. In one camp you have the Unionists, men such as Bob Toombs of Georgia who love the South but can’t quite swallow the secession pill. In the other camp are the Southern rights crowd: Yancey, Rhett, Ashton’s friend Huntoon—he’s one of the speakers at the rally, incidentally. You probably won’t like anything you hear”—the gently pointed statement brought a prim and humorless smile to Virgilia’s mouth—“but it will give you a flavor of current thought in Charleston.”
Only George and his sister accepted the invitation. George feared Virgilia might make a scene despite her promises—perhaps even disrupt one of the speeches by shouting insults from the box in which they were seated. But she seemed uninterested in the oratory, preoccupied. While Huntoon was at the rostrum, proclaiming the need for “a great slaveholding republic from the Potomac to the tropic latitudes,” she whispered that she needed fresh air and left.
She rushed down the dim staircase to the foyer. Sure enough, he was there, loitering with the other coachmen outside the main doors. He was a strikingly handsome black man wearing heavy velvet livery. She had noticed him earlier, as he was opening a carriage door for his master—Huntoon, she realized suddenly.
Virgilia’s breasts felt tight and heavy as she walked to and fro, waving her lace handkerchief in front of her face to indicate why she had left the hall. Sweat glistened in the down on her upper lip. She could hardly keep her eyes off the Negro.
Huntoon’s voice rolled through the open doors behind her. “Our institution must follow the American flag, wheresoever it goes. For our system to contract, or even fail to expand at a steady pace, would be tantamount to defeat. We shall not permit it to happen.”
Wild applause and cheering interrupted him at that point. Boots stomped and shook the floor. The sound poured out of the hall and engulfed her, somehow heightening her feelings of desire. Over the shoulder of another coachman she tried to catch the tall Negro’s eye.
He noticed her but didn’t dare show cordiality toward a white woman, lest he be punished for his boldness. She understood. With one long glance she tried to convey that understanding, and something else. His eyes flickered with surprise. Then, looking past the other coachman’s shoulder, he smiled. She caught her breath. Four of his front teeth were missing. He was one of those poor wretches whose owners identified them in that inhuman way.
His dark, shiny eyes dropped to her breasts for a second. She thought she might faint. He understood! Another coachman took note of his stare and turned to see its object. At
the sight of Virgilia’s white skin, the coachman looked at his tall companion with shock and disbelief.
“Here you are.” George came hurrying out to her. “You left so quickly I was worried. Are you ill?”
“No, it was just too hot in there. I feel better now.” She slipped her arm through his and led him inside.
She couldn’t get the tall Negro out of her mind. On the way back to Tradd Street she asked whether there was any special significance if a slave had several teeth missing. “I saw a man like that outside the hall.”
George tensed while Cooper explained the probable reason for extraction of the teeth. Virgilia reacted as if it were new information, but no outburst followed. Then Cooper said, “The chap you saw must be Huntoon’s man, Grady. Tall fellow? Handsome?”
“I honestly didn’t notice,” Virgilia lied, pressing her legs together beneath her skirts. She had the information she wanted.
Grady. She savored the name as she drifted to sleep that night. A sultry breeze blew from the fragrant garden. The sweet odors and the dampness of the night heightened her hunger until she ached.
“Grady,” she whispered in the dark. She knew she would never see him again, but she wished there were some way it could be otherwise.
Cooler weather arrived at Mont Royal just when the Hazards did. October’s sharp, slanting light lent a melancholy beauty to the days, but it was beauty of which Billy was unaware. He hardly saw anything, or anyone, except Ashton.
He spent every free hour with her. On horseback she took him around the plantation, though he suspected she was improvising much of what she said about it. He sensed that she had little understanding of, or interest in, the way rice was planted or harvested.
The slave community fascinated Billy in a grim, almost morbid fashion. The Negroes returned his stare with sad, hopeless eyes. He heard laughter, but not much. For the first time he had some understanding of why Virgilia, Constance, and the rest of the family opposed the peculiar institution.
In the past his attitude had been largely a reflection of theirs: correct, but lacking any passion. The ride down the dirt street between the rows of mean cottages changed that. If slaves were carefree and happy, as Southerners claimed, he saw damned little evidence. He grew angry. Here was an obvious wrong. The conviction was like a splinter in his foot, not really severe enough to interfere with anything, yet a constant source of discomfort.
