Love and War

by John Jakes

  That very morning, he had returned from his vacation cottage on Chesapeake Bay, where he had prudently retired when rumors reached him of a possible rebel invasion. He was soon driven to distraction by the crackling of squibs that youngsters set off outside his house.

  To add to the commotion, bands blared patriotic airs in the streets, and jubilant crowds surged through President’s Park, serenading at the windows of the Executive Mansion as the news got better and better. Lee whipped; Vicksburg taken; Grant and Sherman and Meade heroes.

  The glad tidings couldn’t compensate for the debilitating effects of the din on lawyer Dills, nor for the familiar pattern that developed in the steamy days following the celebration. Like all the generals before him, Meade appeared to falter and lose nerve. He failed to pursue Lee aggressively, throwing away the chance to destroy the main Confederate army. The illuminations in the windows of mansions and public buildings went dark. The corner bonfires sparked and subsided into acrid smoke.

  Head still pounding, Dills pondered two other pieces of unpleasant information, between which he ultimately perceived a relationship. His butler told him Bent had been at the front door, raving like a madman. And a sharp letter from Stanley Hazard informed Dills that the man he had recommended had nearly precipitated a catastrophe by beating a Democratic newsman when no such treatment had been ordered.

  Stanton had demanded someone be held accountable. “Ezra Dayton” was dismissed, ordered out of Washington—and Mr. Dills would be so good as to make no further recommendations to the special service, thank you.

  For two days and nights, messengers employed by Dills’s firm had been sent out to search the city. It was true—Bent was gone. No one knew where. Dills sat in his office, head throbbing, urgent briefs piling up on his desk while he thought of the stipend, the stipend that would end if he lost track of Starkwether’s son. What should he do? What could he do?

  “The day has been a disaster,” Stanley complained at supper on the Tuesday after Independence Day. “The secretary’s furious because Meade won’t move, and he blames me for the mess with Randolph.”

  “I thought you managed to hush that up.”

  “To a certain extent. Randolph won’t publish anything. That is, his paper in Cincinnati won’t. But Randolph’s on the streets again, and his bruises are a regular advertisement of what was done to him. Then this afternoon, we had more bad news. Laurette?”

  He pointed to his empty glass. Isabel touched her upper lip with her handkerchief. “You’ve had four already, Stanley.”

  “Well, I want another. Laurette!”

  The maid filled the glass with red Bordeaux. He swallowed a third of it while his wife shielded her eyes with her hand. Her husband was undergoing peculiar changes. The responsibilities imposed by his position and the huge sums accumulating in their bank accounts seemed too much for him somehow.

  “What else went wrong?” she asked.

  “One of Baker’s men was in Port Tobacco. He heard that Mr. Dayton, the fellow who brutalized Randolph, apparently deserted to the enemy after Baker drove him out of town. God knows what sensitive information he took with him. The whole business reflects shamefully on the department. No one admits publicly that we control Baker, but everyone knows it. On top of that—” he guzzled the rest of the wine and signaled the maid, who poured another glass after casting an anxious glance at her mistress “—on top of that, as of today, the Conscription Act is officially in force. People hate it. We’ve already had reports of protests, incidents of violence—”

  “Here?”

  “New York, mainly.”

  “Well, my sweet, that’s far away from this house—and for once you might reflect on your good fortune. You could be drafted—you’re still young enough—if you weren’t in the War Department or sufficiently wealthy to pay for a substitute.”

  Stanley sipped his wine, still looking morose. Isabel ordered Laurette out of the room and came around to his end of the long, shining table. Standing behind her husband, she restrained his hand when he reached for the wine glass again. Resting her long chin on the top of his head, she patted his arm in an unusual display of affection.

  “Despite all your troubles, we’re very lucky, Stanley. We should be grateful Congress had the wisdom to enact that substitute clause. Thankful that it’s a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight, as they say.”

  But he wasn’t comforted. He sat contemplating all of the changes in his life during the past couple of years. One was the development of a consuming thirst for strong drink—which could wreck a man’s career. On the other hand, that tended to happen less often if you were wealthy. He must do his best to keep the tippling under control and keep selling shoes to the poor fools who were dying for slogans on both sides of the war.

  “Constance?” In bed beside George on that sultry Wednesday after Gettysburg, she murmured to signify she was listening. “What will I do?”

  The question was one she had been expecting—dreading—for months. She heard the strain in his voice, put there during an evening quarrel with their headstrong son. William had once again absented himself from his late-afternoon dancing class and sneaked off for a game of baseball with some Georgetown boys. Although George championed the game over a quadrille, he nevertheless had to reprimand William. The reprimand led to argument, and the argument ended with shouts from the father, sullen looks of rebellion from the son.

  “You mean about the department?” she asked, though it was hardly necessary.

  “Yes. I can’t abide the stupidity and politicking any longer. And all the money being made from death and suffering—Thank God I have nothing to do with Stanley’s contracts. I’d stuff them down his throat till he choked.”

  A pain started in her left breast. She had experienced many such dull aches lately, in her legs, her upper body, behind her forehead. She suspected the cause was a simple one—worry. She worried about her children, her father in far-off California, her weight creeping up a pound or two each month. She worried about George most of all. Night after night, he brought his troubles home and dwelled on them all evening.

  Ripley’s obstinacy in particular had become too much to bear. George cited a new example at least once a week. Recently General Rosecrans, hearing that Ordnance had some of those repeating coffee-mill guns in storage, had requested them for his Western command. At first Ripley wouldn’t ship a single one; he still disapproved of the design. Finally, forced, he sent ten—and Rosecrans in return sent glowing performance reports to Lincoln. The President urged Ripley to reconsider the purchase of more of the guns. Ripley buried the request.

  Constance knew Ripley’s crimes by heart. He continued to campaign against breechloaders and repeaters, refusing to issue them to any but the mounted service. He tried to cancel existing contracts for them and wrote No more wanted across proposals from manufacturers.

  “And yet,” George had raged only last night, “not forty-eight hours after poor George Pickett’s men were slaughtered charging our positions, I saw a report from a captured reb who fought against Bredan’s Sharpshooters at Little Round Top. In twenty minutes, with single-shot breechloaders, Bredan’s men fired about a hundred rounds each. The reb said his commander thought they had run into two whole regiments.”

  “Had they?”

  George laughed. “Bredan had one hundred men. And still that old son of a bitch writes ‘rejected’ or ‘tabled’ on every plea for better shoulder weapons.”

  There was nothing new about such complaints from George. What was new was the frequency and the ferocity with which he voiced them. She dated that change from about a month ago, before the fall of Vicksburg, when an angry report on faulty Parrott shells crossed his desk. On investigation, he discovered the shells were part of a shipment from a Buffalo ammunition works whose samples he had inspected and turned back. The casings were pitted with holes resulting from faulty sand casting. How vividly she remembered his rage when he came home that evening.

  “
The slimy wretches had the gall to try to disguise the defects. They filled the holes with putty colored to match the metal.”

  Next day there was another blow:

  “Ripley countermanded my rejection order. He approved the shipment. Seems the manufacturer’s a distant relative of his wife. God, I’d love to lob some of those shells up his rear end. It would be the biggest service anyone could do for the Union.”

  That was the background, the accumulating bitterness that prompted his question tonight. She lay motionless in the dark of their bed, knowing the inevitable question she was duty-bound to ask by way of reply.

  “What would you like to do, George?”

  “Which answer do you want, the ideal or the realistic?”

  “There are two? The former first, then.”

  “I’d like to work for Lincoln.”

  “Honestly? You admire him that much?”

  “I do. Since that night we met at the arsenal, I feel I’ve come to know him well. He’s in and out of our offices several times a week, asking questions, prodding, encouraging good ideas in spite of—maybe because of—our departmental dullness. I admit the man’s rough-hewn, and it’s lucky that campaigns aren’t won or lost on the candidate’s ability to look and act presentable, or he’d never be elected to anything. He doesn’t dissemble, and some say that’s a flaw—he never hides his doubts or dark moods. Ward Lamon told me several months ago that Lincoln’s convinced he won’t live to see Springfield again. But the man has qualities that are in damn short supply in this town. Honesty. Idealism. Strength. Good Lord, Constance, considering all the burdens he bears, from national to domestic, his strength is monumental. Yes, I wish I could work for him in some capacity, but there’s no place.”

  “You inquired?”

  “Discreetly. I didn’t say anything to you because I felt sure it was an impossibility.”

  “Then what’s the realistic answer?”

  “I can go with the military railroads if Herman Haupt will have me. It’s a good alternative. And I’m eager.”

  He said it so promptly she knew he had been ready with the idea for some time. Trying to keep her voice calm, she said, “That’s field duty. Close to the battle lines—”

  “Sometimes, yes. But what’s important is this. It’s work I believe I can do and take pride in.”

  Silence, broken by the inevitable rumbling of the night wagons. Sensing her tension, he rolled on his side—they were sleeping without clothes, as they often did—and caressed her bosom, soft, springy, wonderfully comforting in its familiarity.

  “Do you not want me to do it?”

  “George, in—” she cleared her throat “—in this marriage, you know neither party ever asks or answers that kind of question.”

  “I’d still like to know what you—”

  “Do what you must,” she said, kissing him, one palm against his face. She blinked rapidly, hoping he wouldn’t feel the fear-inspired tears that sprang to her eyes.

  “So, Herman—will you accept a new man?”

  George asked that late the next day as he and the bearded brigadier leaned on Willard’s bar. Haupt looked worn out. He had been shunting back and forth to Pennsylvania to get the rail lines from Gettysburg in repair.

  “You know the answer to that. Question is, will the secretary release you?”

  “By God, he’d better. I can’t stand working within a mile of that man.” He swallowed a raw oyster from the plate in front of him. “I suppose you’ve heard of the Randolph scandal—”

  “Who hasn’t? I gather he’s forbidden to write about it, but he recruits listeners and repeats the story every chance he gets.”

  “He damn well should. It’s a disgrace.”

  “Well, such philosophic reflections aside, I urge you to move fast. I think Stanton wants my head. I dislike him as much as you do, and he knows it. I refuse to put up with his prejudices and arrogance—” Haupt tossed off the rest of his whiskey with a dour smile. “—since I have my own to maintain.”

  They divided the remaining oysters. After the last one, George belched—one more irksome sign, along with joints that ached in the morning and gray hairs in his mustache, that his time was hurrying by.

  Haupt asked how he hoped to effect the transfer. “It won’t work if I simply request your services.”

  “I know. I have an appointment with the general-in-chief in the morning.”

  “Halleck? The master paper-shuffler? I didn’t know you were acquainted with Old Brains.”

  “I’ve met him twice socially. He’s an Academy man—”

  “Class of ’39. Four years after mine. West Point takes care of its own—is that what you’re counting on?”

  “It is,” George said. “I’ve learned a little something about the way this town operates, Herman.”

  Henry Halleck, who allowed George ten minutes on his schedule, seemed a man of hemispheres: rounded shoulders, convex forehead, bulging eyes. He was more scholar than soldier—some years ago he had translated a work by Jomini—but an able, if pedestrian, administrator.

  From the window where he stood in his familiar posture, hands locked behind his spotless, neatly buttoned uniform, he said: “When I noted your name on the appointment calendar, I called for your record, Major. It’s exemplary. You are definite about wanting to leave the Ordnance Department?”

  “Yes, General. I need to feel more useful. Desk duty has palled.”

  “I suspect you mean Ripley has palled,” Halleck said with a rare show of humor. “He really is your superior, you know. You ought to apply to him for a transfer.”

  Understanding what he risked, George nevertheless shook his head. “With all respect, sir, I can’t do that. General Ripley would almost certainly deny my request. Whereas if I could have your leave to go directly to the adjutant general—”

  “No, that isn’t permissible.”

  George knew he had lost. But Halleck kept speaking. “I do understand and sympathize with your predicament, however. I know you came to Washington at Cameron’s behest, persuaded only by a strong sense of patriotic duty. I applaud your desire to get more directly into the thick of things. If you’re to pull it off, it must be done properly.”

  Retrieving George from despair with those words, he leaned his great balding head forward till it seemed to float before the junior officer. Lowering his voice, as every good Washingtonian did when arranging some little scheme or favor, Halleck went on.

  “Forward your request for a transfer to the adjutant general through channels—being sure to send a copy to General Ripley. Meantime, I shall speak on your behalf—unofficially, you understand. If we are successful, be prepared to do battle with Mr. Secretary Stanton.” He extended his hand. “I wish you luck.”

  George had already prepared the paper to which Halleck referred. He sent them up the line immediately, and received the secretarial summons much sooner than he expected.

  The War Department building to which George reported at half past two on Monday had a distinct air of gloom. Meade had dallied; Lee had gotten clean away; the Conscription Act was precipitating more incidents of street violence in New York City. The President was said to have plunged from a period of intensive activity and hope into another of his depressions.

  “You wish to work for Haupt? My dear Major,” Stanton said sourly, “do you know he has never officially accepted the rank of brigadier after receiving the promotion last September? Who can tell how long he’ll remain in charge of the military railroads?”

  In the voice of the bearded, Buddha-like man, George heard dislike and a warning. “Nevertheless, sir,” he said, “I’m anxious for the transfer. I came to Ordnance at Secretary Cameron’s request, and I’ve tried to carry out my duties faithfully, even though I’ve never felt fully qualified or very useful. I want to serve in some capacity more directly related to the conduct of the war.”

  Stanton fingered the earpiece of his spectacles; a trick of the light rendered the lenses opaque. Perhaps
he knew how to hold his head to achieve the disquieting effect.

  “Would it change your mind if I told you General Ripley may shortly retire?” An insincere smile. “The general is, after all sixty-nine years of age.”

  And has he crossed you once too often? “No, sir, that would have no bearing on my request.”

  “Let me be frank with you, Major Hazard. Since you came in here, I have detected a measure of hostility in your voice—No please, spare me the denials.” George reddened; he hadn’t realized his feelings were so evident. “Your determination to leave is clear from the manner in which you negotiated for the transfer, General Halleck spoke to me personally over the weekend.” Stanton removed his spectacles. “I have a feeling you don’t like this entire department. Am I correct?”

  “Sir—” Better to say nothing, get out and be done. He knew it yet his nature and his conscience wouldn’t settle for that. “With due respect, Mr. Secretary—yes, you are. I am not in accord with some of the policies of the War Department.”

  Coolly correct, Stanton put on his glasses again. “May I request that you be more specific, sir?”

  “There is the Eamon Randolph matter—”

  Stanton overrode him with a loud, “I know nothing about that.”

  “As I understand it, the man was beaten by members of your Detective Bureau, solely for criticizing policies of this administration—which I thought was every citizen’s right.”

  “Not in time of war.” Stanton’s pursed smile grew cold. He leaned forward, and the light-play turned his lenses to glittering disks again. “May I add, Major, that if you had ever entertained hopes of a permanent career in the military, you would have dashed them by what you just said. You have overstepped.”

  “I’m sorry,” George said, though he wasn’t. “The matter’s been on my conscience, and it’s widely known that Lafayette Baker works for you.”

  Still the smile, deadly and sly. “Search every item of official correspondence—every scrap of paper in the waste bins of this department, my dear Major—you will find not one scintilla of evidence to support that statement. Now be so kind as to leave this office. I shall be happy to approve your request—you and that madman Haupt are cut from the same bolt.”