by John Jakes
In the raw amiability of the moment, Jones rashly said, “Young Charles may give you quite a fight.”
Cuffey’s face drained of good humor. “I’m waitin’ for that. I’m jus’ waitin’. Maybe we wrestle one las’ time. We do, I know who gonna lose.”
124
INVALIDED HOME WITH A chest wound, Billy slept a good deal. He wasn’t awake when Constance, ashen, brought the letter to Brett in the library.
“It’s from George. Come sit down before you read it.”
The news about Orry fell on Brett with the force of a sledge. Seated, she felt her whole body sag, and for a moment she labored to get her breath. Constance dropped to her knees beside the chair while Brett swallowed and made queer gulping sounds. She lifted the two sheets, gestured with them in a forlorn way, laid them down again, shaking her head.
“I don’t understand. Madeline said he was still in Richmond.”
“We all thought that.”
Brett started to cry then, heaving sobs. Constance was startled because the manifestation of grief lasted such a short time. Less than a minute. Then a stark look came onto Brett’s face. Constance saw the object of her sister-in-law’s fierce stare: the prized meteorite in its place on the library table.
“Damn them. Damn their oratory and their precious rights and their generals”—Brett was up then, lunging—“and their weapons—” Constance was too slow to prevent her from snatching the meteorite, whose significance all those in the household understood. Spinning, Brett threw it like a discus at the nearest window.
It shattered glass and sailed away over the sunlit lawn. In panic, Constance thought, He’ll never forgive me if it’s lost. I must go find it this minute. She was immediately ashamed of the reaction; staying with Orry’s sister was far more important.
Brett collapsed on an ottoman, the pages of the letter fluttering to the floor. She crossed her arms on her knees and bent her head, crying again. Constance barely heard the words amid the sobs.
“ I’m—sorry. I’ll—hunt for the star iron. I know it’s—George’s treasure. It’s just—just that—”
Constance could make out nothing else.
What an admirable woman Billy had married, she thought half an hour later. In the face of a similar responsibility, would she be as strong? Brett had dried her puffy eyes, put back a few undone strands of hair, and recovered the letter, saying, “I must go up to Madeline. Is she in her sitting room?”
Constance nodded. “She wanted to read awhile. Would you like me to go with you?”
“Thank you, but I think it’s best if I’m alone.”
Slowly, Brett walked past the library table. After a ten-minute search, the meteorite had been found by the gardener and returned to its place on the gleaming wood. But Billy’s wife, in a matter of an instant, had conceived a hatred of the object—what it meant, what it made possible—that would last until she died.
In the foyer, she reached out to grasp the freshly oiled banister, gazing upward. She fought back more tears and images of Orry. She lifted her foot to the first step.
It seemed to require hours to go up the staircase; she had never taken a longer or harder journey. At last she turned down the hall to the door of Madeline’s sitting room, which was ajar. Through the opening Brett saw sunshine flooding the carpet; the room overlooked the laurel-covered hilltops behind the mansion. Her hand shook as she knocked.
“Yes, come in,” Madeline called cheerily.
Go on, Brett thought. It became a silent scream. Go on. She wanted to run.
“Who’s there?”
Underskirts rustling, Madeline walked to the door and opened it. The index finger of her other hand held her place in a slim, gold-stamped book. Her dress today was one of her favorites, a blue silk so deep and rich it almost looked black.
“Brett! Do come in. I was just rereading a few of Poe’s poems. One is Orry’s very favor—my dear, what’s the matter?” She had been slow to note the signs that Brett had been crying. “Has Billy taken a bad turn?”
“It isn’t Billy. It’s Orry.”
Madeline’s dark eyes showed apprehension. So did her fading smile. She took her finger from the book, drew it against her breast like a shield. She saw the letter in Brett’s right hand.
“Is there some problem in Richmond?”
“Orry isn’t—wasn’t—in Richmond.” Why was she so slow to tell it? Delay would only prolong the anguish for both of them. “This is from George. I’m afraid it’s very bad news.”
With a forced look of skepticism, Madeline took the letter to the sunlit window bay. Brett waited near the door, noting the way Orry’s wife moved the first page away from her face; her eyesight had begun to trouble her. She was turned toward the window.
She finished the first page and began the second. The initial indication of a reaction was a ripple of the dress material across her shoulders.
Her head whipped around. Angry, she said, “The Petersburg lines? How did he get to the Petersburg lines?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
Madeline forced her eyes back to the letter. Watching her in profile, Brett saw the light glisten on a tear. The book dropped from Madeline’s hand, striking the carpet with a soft thump. She seemed to tense and grow taller, as if straining on tiptoe for some reason.
Her hand crushed the letter. “Orry,” she cried out and tumbled sideways in a spill of silk and petticoats.
“Kathleen,” Brett exclaimed in the hall. “Kathleen—someone—bring the sal ammonia. Hurry!”
Voices downstairs said she had been heard. Brett turned around in the doorway, stricken by the sight of Madeline sprawled on the fine Persian rug. She was awake after the brief fainting spell, but she didn’t get up. She lay on her side, awkwardly supporting herself with both hands. She trembled, her mouth half open. When she looked at Brett, there was no recognition.
The effect was overpowering. Brett was paralyzed, unable to move or help her sister-in-law for the next few moments. She couldn’t even speak. Billy had been spared, but her brother was gone. The pain was unmerciful. How much worse it must be for Madeline. How would she find the strength to survive? Or even a reason to try?
125
CHARLES WOKE AT DAYBREAK on Sunday, the nineteenth of February. He had been dreaming of Gus.
It happened often. Opening his eyes didn’t relieve the melancholy of the dreams or banish her image. She was a constant presence, stealing into his thoughts at intervals every day.
Yawning, he picked up the light cavalry saber and trudged downstairs. In the kitchen building, he found a fresh pot of imitation coffee, concocted of God knew what, and not a single Negro. He drank half a cup of the stuff—all he could stomach; it tasted like wood shavings. He poured the rest out the door and hunted for a rag.
He walked back to the weathered plantation house and braced an old chair against the wall on the piazza. From there he could watch the tree-sheltered lane leading to the river road and the road itself, brightened by winter sun. He pulled the rag out of his back pocket and reached down at the end of the piazza for a pinch of sandy soil. He dropped it on the rag and moistened it with spit till its consistency suited him. He sat down in the chair, drew the Solingen sword from its scabbard, and began to polish the dulled blade.
The stillness had a quality of expectancy. It had been present since yesterday, when wild rumors swept the river district. Rumors that Columbia had been burned night before last.
About eight o’clock, traffic on the river road began to pick up, men and an occasional military wagon coming from the direction of Charleston. Some butternut boys turned in, begging for a drink. Charles agreed to direct them to the well in return for information.
“What’s going on in the city?”
“A lot of it’s burned down. The mayor surrendered the whole place to some damned Dutchman, General Schimmel-something, right about this time yesterday. We are all going home. The South’s licked.”
Could have told yo
u that a year ago. He didn’t say it. They looked miserable enough—as did Cooper, who stepped onto the piazza wearing ragged slippers and a dressing gown with a large hole in one elbow.
“What’s become of Sumter?” he asked one of the ragged soldiers.
“Nothing left but a pile of rock.” The boy added bitterly, “That’s what the Yanks wanted more’n anything.”
“I have a house on Tradd Street. Do you think it survived the fire?”
“Couldn’t say, but I wouldn’t count on it. Is it all right if we stop talkin’ and find the well?”
After they left, Cooper went inside, shaking his head. Charles returned to his chair and kept rubbing the steel. The engraved flowers. The medallion containing the letters C. S. The legend on the other side: To Charles Main, beloved of his family, 1861. That was another man. From another life, not this one.
A dilapidated shay pulled in about noon. The driver was Markham Bull, a neighbor and member of the large and distinguished Bull family. Fifty-five or so, Markham was in a state. He had been in Columbia attending to the affairs of a lately deceased sister when Sherman arrived. He had barely escaped in the aftermath of Friday night’s fire, which he confirmed as fact.
“Whole town’s gone, just about. The damn Yankees are claiming Wade Hampton lit the first match, to destroy the cotton rather than let them get hold of it. You can’t imagine the behavior of Sherman’s men. By comparison, the Goths and the Vandals were courtly. They even burned Millwood.”
Charles raised his eyebrows. “Hampton’s Millwood?”
“Yes, sir. All of his family portraits—his fine library—everything.”
“Where’s the general now?”
“I don’t know. I heard he planned to ride west of the Mississippi to continue the fight, but that may not be true.”
The fighting part could be true, Charles thought as Bull climbed into his shay and rattled off. The death of his son had embittered Hampton. If beautiful old Millwood was gone as well, that would only enhance the bitterness. Charles had a dark feeling that much the same process would be taking place within a lot of people in Dixie during the next weeks and months. Whether you construed it as punishment or suffering depended on your loyalties, but either way he was damn sure there would be plenty of bad blood left after the war.
The stragglers on the road became fewer as the day wore on. Light clouds moved in, hazing the sun, then hiding it. Charles kept polishing. By four o’clock he had restored most of the blade’s original brilliance. He spat into an azalea bush, stretched and sniffed the wind’s marshy odor. A salt crow squawked somewhere on the river behind the house. It struck him that he had heard a lot of crows during the last hour.
Around five, Cooper reappeared, gray-faced and. tense. “Charles, you’d better come inside.”
In the library, he discovered Andy and a twelve-year-old Negro boy who was excited and perspiring. “This is Jarvis, Martha’s son,” Cooper said to his cousin, thus identifying the youth as part of the Mont Royal population. “Tell us again what you saw, Jarvis.”
“I seen a bunch of white an’ black men in the marsh about a mile beyond the cabins. They was comin’ this way.”
“How many is a bunch?” Charles asked.
“Forty. Maybe fifty. They got guns. But they was laughin’ and larkin’ a lot. Sure not in any hurry. One buck, he was fat as a papa coon in the summertime. He was ridin’ an old mule and singin’ and joshin’ with everybody—”
Andy scowled. “Got to be that damn Cuffey.”
“Thank you,” Charles said to the boy.
Cooper repeated the words, then abruptly added, “Wait.” He reached in his pocket and gave Jarvis a coin, which delighted the youngster. Charles was astonished at the persistence of old patterns, even in a man as free-thinking as Cooper. The little exchange was seen by the woman named Jane, who had appeared silently at the library door. She looked at Cooper with contempt as Jarvis ran out.
Charles felt an old tension in his middle, the kind that always preceded a scrap. At the same time, there came an unexpected buoyancy. The waiting was over.
Cooper said, “Wonder when they’ll come?”
“If I were Cuffey,” Charles said, “I’d wait till first thing tomorrow—when we’re dog-tired from staying up all night keeping watch. Better break out those two Hawkens and anything else that can be put to lethal use.”
Andy frowned, as if considering whether he dared speak his mind. He did. “Might make more sense to pack up and leave, Mr. Cooper.”
“No,” Cooper said in a voice so firm and calm Charles was startled a second time. “This is my home. My family built Mont Royal, and I won’t see it lost without a fight.”
“My sentiments, too,” Charles said. A tired smile. “Not very intelligent but nevertheless my sentiments.”
Jane spoke. “And are the others supposed to risk their lives to save a place where you kept them like chattels?”
“Jane,” Andy began, stepping forward. She ignored him.
Cooper scowled but quickly controlled his feelings. “No one is forced to stay. Not you or any of the people.”
“But most will,” Andy said. “I will. There are some good things on Mont Royal.”
“Oh, yes,” Jane said, though the assent was canceled by her tone. Walking past Charles, she ran a finger along a row of gilt-lettered book spines, rich embossed leathers dyed green, deep maroon, royal blue. “A few. Here’s one—Mr. Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia—” She faced Cooper, defiant. “He made some wise observations about slaves and slavery. If the South had heeded them, you could have saved yourselves all of this.”
“You can lecture us later, Miss Jane,” Charles said, overly sharp because he privately agreed with her. “Right now we must call the men together.”
“And bring the women and youngsters to one safe place,” Cooper added. “Andy, will you get started?”
Nodding, Andy took Jane’s arm and guided her out of the library—too firmly for her taste. She reacted by pulling away. Charles could hear them arguing as they left the house.
Cooper cast a glance at the stand holding Orry’s old uniform, then sank into a chair. He regarded his cousin with gloomy eyes. “We’re in a bad spot, aren’t we?”
“Afraid so. The numbers are against us. Best we can do is maybe try an old Plains Indian trick I learned in Texas—” Frowning, he examined the saber he had brought in from the outdoors. One of the strands of fine brass wire that wrapped the hilt was broken.
He realized Cooper was waiting for him to finish. “Kill the leader, and sometimes the rest of the war party will turn back.”
Cooper pulled at his lower lip. “Sounds like a pretty faint hope to me.”
“It is. Do we have another?”
“Pack and run.”
“I thought you said—”
“I did. I want to save this place, and not merely for sentimental reasons. I think we’ll need it for survival once there’s a surrender. If we run, we can be sure they’ll spare nothing.”
“All right, it’s settled. We stay.”
“You needn’t.”
“What?”
“I mean it, Charles. You came here hunting a remount, not more fighting.”
“Hell, Cousin, fighting’s all I know how to do. The current unpleasantness has rendered me unfit for a civilized occupation.”
They stared at each other, neither man smiling. Charles felt anxious, impatient. The buoyancy returned, more intense than before. There was a battle coming, all right. In the distance, a salt crow screamed and a second one answered.
126
EACH TIME VIRGILIA HEARD a carriage on Thirteenth Street, she rushed to the front window and was disappointed. Why was Sam so late? Something wrong at home?
Once more she let the curtain fall. Outside, February dusk deepened over the Northern Liberties. Virgilia’s cottage in that outlying village—not the best location, but adequate—was a tidy four-room place, freshly painted after Sam bou
ght it for her. The small lot was enhanced by two giant oaks and a bordering fence of new white pickets.
As the mistress of a congressman, Virgilia found herself constantly experimenting with roles she couldn’t have imagined herself playing even a year ago. Tonight the cottage smelled of succulent roast duckling. She had always loathed kitchen work and would never be an accomplished cook. But she was learning. Her lover liked good food and wine.
She was also dressing properly and not just occasionally. Sam liked women well-groomed everywhere but the bedroom. For this visit, she had spent forty minutes arranging her hair, perfumed herself, and put on her best burgundy bombazine over a merciless corset that minimized her waist and emphasized her breasts.
To her immense satisfaction, Virgilia had also been cast as her lover’s unofficial adviser. He discussed congressional business with her and had even started to ask her advice on certain matters. On the parlor desk lay a stack of closely written sheets he had left with her last time—the draft of a speech he was to deliver to a Republican caucus a few days after the inaugural. Sam wanted to use the occasion to put distance between himself and the Chief Executive. He had asked for her opinion of what he had written.
He got no such help from his wife, nor did he want any. He would stay married to the woman, though, as he confided to Virgilia, he considered her a sexless nonentity. He suspected his wife knew about the liaison with Virgilia, but he was confident she would never make trouble. His strategy for assuring this was a simple one. He frequently hinted that her situation was precarious and that he might leave her at any moment, although neither was true.
By half past seven the duckling was overdone, and Virgilia was upset. Pacing, she whirled toward the door at the sound of a horse. She flung the door open.
“Sam? Oh, I was so worried—”
It puzzled her that he didn’t immediately climb down from the covered seat of the buggy. “I had to rush Emily to the train. Her father’s ill in Muncie. She took the children. She’ll be away at least a week.” Light from the doorway illuminated his smile. “I can stay the night if I’m invited.”
