by John Jakes
“Seven. Eight.”
Sweat greased Whitney’s blotchy face. The trembling had worked its way into his shoulders. Would he shoot or collapse first?
“Nine.”
Charles stared straight ahead. Orry saw the tip of his tongue flick up to lick sweat from his lip, the only outward sign of the anxiety that must be twisting his belly. Orry wanted to shout, “Remember—steady and smooth.”
“Ten.”
Whitney’s knees buckled, but he stayed upright and managed to pivot. He flung his pistol hand out in front of him with all the violence Orry had criticized in Charles that first time in the field. The roar startled Charles. He blinked so hard Orry thought he was hit. Then, from a tree about four feet behind Charles, a branch came tumbling down.
A damp stain appeared on the front of Whitney’s trousers. He executed a clumsy half turn and started to take a step. There were gasps from the spectators and an angry, hissing whisper from Dawkins.
“You must stand, Whitney. Stand!”
He did, but not without a struggle. The humiliating stain widened. He shook so badly the pistol bobbed up and down. Charles slowly extended his arm, took aim, and, with a cool look down the octagonal barrel, fired.
Whitney shrieked like a girl. He twisted to the left and fell, clutching his sleeve. Red showed between his fingers, but Charles had only pinked him. What’s more, he had hit the spot at which he had aimed. Orry ran forward, jubilant.
Whitney passed out with Dawkins kneeling at his side. The spectators broke into applause. Drained of tension, Charles was wandering toward the riverbank in an erratic way. Orry caught him.
“You’ve got to acknowledge that applause. It’s for you.”
The young man stared at Orry, thunderstruck. Then he looked at the Smith relatives. It was true. They were applauding his marksmanship, his courage, and his generosity in wounding Whitney when he could have killed him. All the characteristics of a true Carolina gentleman, Orry thought, almost dizzy with happiness.
Charles saluted the spectators with his pistol. But he couldn’t yet believe what had happened.
“I have to thank you again,” Charles said as they rode homeward. Mild sunshine between the trees put bars of light and shadow on the road. Both men found the late-winter day a glorious one on which to be alive.
“You did it yourself, Charles.”
“No, sir. Without you, I’d be lying dead back there.” He smiled and shook his head. “My Lord, you don’t know how it felt to hear those men clapping for me instead of their own kinsman.”
“Who unfortunately showed himself a coward. All bluster, no substance. They didn’t like that.”
“Well, I can’t get over it. I never will. I do have one question about—”
He stopped. Orry waited, but Charles said nothing more. Orry pointed ahead to a roadside hovel with a weathered sign hanging crookedly on the front. “Do you know that place? It’s a poor excuse for a tavern, but the man does keep a stock of passable whiskey. I think we both deserve a drink. Shall we stop?”
“By all means.” Charles grinned and galloped ahead.
The landlord goggled when his visitors ordered ardent spirits at half past seven in the morning. Orry’s money quickly curtailed any objections or questions. The hovel smelled, so the two drinkers sat on the front stoop in the sunshine.
Orry swallowed half his whiskey, shivered, and blinked pleasurably. Then he said, “Earlier you started to ask a question.”
“Yes. Whenever I got into a fight before, people disapproved. You included. Why was it different this morning? We were doing a hell of a lot more than punching each other. Why didn’t anyone object?”
Orry studied Charles, wanting to learn if the young man was having some kind of sarcastic sport. He saw no sign of it. Charles had asked a serious question. An important one, too.
Orry wanted his answer to be right. He thought about it, then tossed off the rest of his liquor and clapped Charles on the shoulder.
“I think I can answer you best back at Mont Royal.”
“I don’t understand.”
But Orry was already swinging up into the saddle. “Come on.”
Tillet, Clarissa, and the girls rushed outside the moment they spied the horses in the lane. An inevitable delay followed as the spellbound listeners heard Orry’s tale. Tillet offered enthusiastic congratulations, Clarissa sobbed with relief, and the girls jumped up and down and begged to hear Orry describe Charles’s cool bravery a second time. All in all it took about an hour. Only then did Orry draw his cousin into the dim library and point to the clothes stand bearing his uniform coat and sword.
“There’s your answer.”
Charles looked baffled. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Consider men who go to war. What do they do?”
“Fight.”
“Yes, but more than that, they do so in a manner understood and agreed upon beforehand. Fierce as it may be, there is a code of conduct among honorable men who fight. Those Smiths applauded you not simply because you won but because you observed the rules. Whitney didn’t. He tried to step away from your bullet. You saw the reaction. Before this, you never fought by the rules. That’s the difference.”
Orry lifted the left sleeve of the coat. “The world doesn’t necessarily condemn the man who loves a battle. It encourages and rewards some of them. Even a gallant loser may get a share of the glory when the history books are written. I’m not sure it’s altogether right to encourage and reward fighting and killing, but that’s the way things are. Have I answered you?”
Charles nodded slowly, gazing at the scabbard, the brass buttons, the dark blue coat as if they were imbued with a religious significance. What Orry had just said came as a revelation.
Orry began to rummage in a cabinet. “There’s whiskey here. I don’t know about you, but I’m still thirsty as sin.”
“So am I.”
Charles walked around to the other side of the stand, never taking his eyes from the uniform. Orry too was swept up by a revelation. He saw Cousin Charles in a totally new light.
He may not be lost after all. Look at him staring at that uniform. He’s fascinated.
Starting that very morning, he took Cousin Charles in hand.
He began with small readjustments. Mild, almost diffident suggestions about appearance. Manners. Regular hours. Nothing too important or demanding at first because he expected rebellion. Instead, he got instantaneous and dramatic compliance. Charles began to show up for every meal, his face and hands scrubbed, his shirttail tucked in, and no bowie knife at his belt.
Three weeks after the duel, Orry offered Charles a couple of books, which he urged him to read. Orry had chosen easy works: light-historical romances by William Gilmore Simms, a South Carolinian who was almost as popular as Fenimore Cooper had been in his day. The speed with which Charles finished the novels convinced Orry that the young man was exceptionally intelligent—something Clarissa had said for years. Orry had never believed her.
Next, Orry gave his cousin short lessons in some of the social conventions: courtesies to be accorded to ladies, what constituted proper attire for different kinds of public and family functions. Charles not only paid attention; he began to put some of the principles into action. He was soon treating Ashton and Brett with a new politeness that flabbergasted them. But they enjoyed it because Charles was handsome and carried off the courtly flourishes with hardly a trace of awkwardness.
“The boy’s a born cavalier,” Orry exclaimed to Madeline at their next meeting. “He puts me to shame. He’s graceful, charming—and what’s more, it comes naturally to him. Where has he been hiding that side of his character?”
“Under a layer of dirt and resentment, probably,” she said with a gentle smile.
“I expect you’re right. The transformation’s incredible. All it took for him to come into his own was a little affection from his family.”
“From you, principally. Even at Resolute they’re gossipi
ng about the change. Nancy told me Charles follows you everywhere.”
“All day long. Like a puppy! It’s embarrassing.” But Orry’s expression said he really didn’t mind the hero worship. “Trouble is, you solve one problem and the solution creates another.”
“What now? You’ve been saying Charles is straightening out—”
“That’s exactly what I mean. He is. Before, I was positive he’d wind up dead in some ditch after a brawl or a horse race. Now I’m wracking my brain to figure out what he should do with his life. I must suggest something, and soon.”
“You sound like a father.”
“Don’t joke. It’s no small responsibility.”
“Of course it isn’t. I wasn’t joking. I was smiling because you’re happy. I’ve never seen you in such good spirits. You like the responsibility.”
He looked at her. “Yes. I do.”
After supper every night, if Orry had no work in the office, he and Charles would take a whiskey together in the library. Sometimes Tillet joined them, but if so, he was a silent participant. Silent and amazed. He knew something positive and wholesome had happened in the relationship between his son and his nephew. He didn’t want to interfere. He also realized that, in spirit and in fact, Orry was fast becoming the head of the family. Tillet resented that more than a little. Yet it pleased him, too. Cousin Charles was reserved when Tillet was present. When he wasn’t, the young man couldn’t hear enough about Orry’s experiences as a cadet.
“You really liked it at West Point?”
“Well, not completely. But I made several good friends—and I met my best friend there.”
“George.” When Orry nodded, Charles asked, “Did you want to stay in the Army?”
“Very much. General Scott, however, has this unreasonable prejudice against any officer with just one arm. Maybe it’s because he still has two.”
Charles smiled. It wasn’t much of a jest, but he realized that never before had Orry been able to make light of his injury. It was a remarkable change.
Charles returned his gaze to the uniform on the stand. “I just can’t get over the idea that you can fight and get paid for it.”
Orry held his breath. Was this the right moment? He seized on it.
“Charles—here’s a thought. It’s possible that we could secure an Academy appointment for you.”
“But—I’m not smart enough.”
“Yes, you are. You just don’t know enough to pass the entrance examinations. In other words, you have the intelligence but not the facts. Herr Nagel could certainly give you those in the next year or so. You’d have to apply yourself, but I know you can do it if you have the desire.”
Stunned by the new future he had glimpsed, Cousin Charles sat a moment before answering.
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“First-rate! I’ll corner Nagel in the morning.”
“What?” the tutor cried when he heard Orry’s plan. “Instruct him? I should say not, Herr Main. The first time I reprimand him for failing to complete an assignment, he will whip out that gigantic knife and pfut!” Nagel’s thumb slashed across his throat. “Thus ends my brilliant academic service to this family.”
“Charles has changed,” Orry assured him. “Give him a chance. I’ll pay you a bonus.”
On that basis Herr Nagel was happy to gamble. At week’s end he came back to his employer with a stunned look.
“You are absolutely right. The transformation is astonishing. He remains stubborn and irritable over some things—chiefly his own unfamiliarity with concepts he should have learned long before this. But he’s quick. I believe I can bring him along rapidly, though naturally it will require some, ah, extra effort.”
“For which you’ll receive extra compensation every week.”
“You are too kind,” Herr Nagel murmured, bowing. “We shall make a scholar of that one yet.”
There was exhilaration in Orry’s voice and a sparkle in his eyes. “We just want to make him a West Point cadet. There’s going to be a professional soldier in this family.” To himself he added, “After all.”
At the end of the first week of April, Orry went to his father. “In two or three years, Charles should be ready to enter the Academy. I’ve learned there’ll be a vacancy at that time. It isn’t too early to secure the appointment for him. We might start with a letter to the War Department. We could ask Senator Calhoun to transmit it. Shall I write it, or will you?”
Tillet showed him a copy of the Mercury. “Calhoun’s dead.”
“Good God. When?”
“The last day of March. In Washington.”
It shouldn’t have come as a great surprise, Orry realized. Calhoun had been failing for a long time, and politically the past month had been one of the stormiest in recent history. Henry Clay’s compromise resolutions had come up for Senate debate. Because Calhoun was the South’s senior spokesman, his reaction, although predictable, was widely awaited. But he’d been too ill to take the floor. Senator Mason had read his remarks for him. Of course Calhoun denounced the Clay program and warned again that Northern hostility was making secession attractive to Southerners. Over the years Calhoun had moved steadily away from a nationalistic position to one that put the welfare of his section first. Most Southerners agreed that he had been driven to this hardened and parochial stand by the activities of the abolitionists, both in and out of Congress.
Three days after Calhoun’s speech was presented, Senator Daniel Webster had risen to plead the opposite view. He had spoken eloquently in favor of the resolutions and of the urgent need to put preservation of the Union above all else. The speech was too full of goodwill and the spirit of compromise for many of Webster’s Northern colleagues, who promptly began vilifying him. Tillet, too, called Webster’s seventh of March address an abomination—though not for the same reasons the abolitionist senators did.
But at the moment Orry was thinking of Calhoun from another perspective. “The senator was one of the Academy’s staunchest friends.”
“Once,” Tillet snapped. “He was also a friend of the Union. So were we all. Then the Yankees turned on us.”
Tillet seemed to suggest the attack had been causeless. Orry thought of Priam but said nothing. The unexpected pang of conscience surprised and troubled him. His father went on:
“It wasn’t merely old age and sickness that killed John Calhoun. It was Jackson, Garrison, Seward—that whole damned crowd who opposed him, and us, in everything from nullification to the way we earn our bread. They harried Calhoun like a pack of mad dogs. They exhausted him.” Tillet flung the newspaper on the floor. “It won’t be forgotten.”
Orry remained silent, upset by his father’s unforgiving tone.
A few weeks later Tillet had further cause for outrage. A slave who had run away from a plantation near Mont Royal was recaptured in Columbus, Ohio, by a professional slave catcher. The slave catcher had been hired by the owner of the runaway.
Before the man and his prisoner could leave Columbus, abolitionists intervened. They threatened the slave catcher with lynching and took the escaped black into protective custody, saying it was necessary for a court to rule on the legality of the claim. That was a subterfuge; they knew the court had no jurisdiction. But the delay gave them time to spirit the runaway out of jail. A rear door was mysteriously left unlocked. The fugitive was over the border and safe in Canada before most people knew about it. The unsubtle intrigue in Ohio outraged the slave’s owner and many of his neighbors. Tillet talked of little else.
Orry, meantime, shared his personal happiness with Madeline. Cousin Charles had settled down to studies with Herr Nagel, and Orry could hardly stop boasting about his protégé’s progress.
“We’ll have to suspend the lessons for two months this summer, though.” It was a clumsy way to introduce another subject that was on his mind, but it had to be done.
“Charles is leaving?”
“Along with the rest of us. I’ve leased a summer cottage in Newport
, near George’s place.”
“You’ll have your reunion at last!”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Orry, how exciting.” Her response seemed genuine. If she felt disappointment, she hid it well.
“You won’t miss me?”
“Don’t tease. I’ll miss you terribly. Those two months will be the longest of my life.”
She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so passionately that the little volume of Cullen Bryant’s poems slipped off her lap unnoticed. After she caught her breath she said, “But I’ll survive. That is, I will as long as I know you’ll come back to me. I couldn’t bear it if you took up with some Yankee girl.”
“I’d never do that,” Orry replied with that humorless sincerity Madeline found touching sometimes; on other occasions, for no reason she could explain, it infuriated her. He went on, “It’s time Charles got a peek at the world beyond the borders of South Carolina. If he goes to the Academy, he’ll meet all sorts of people with new and different ideas. That can be a shock. It was to me. He must be prepared.”
She touched his face. “You sound more like a father every day.”
“Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“Nothing.” She gave his cheek a wifely peck. “It’s grand for Charles, but he’s not the only one getting benefits from this new relationship—not by any means. You’re so much happier. That makes me happy, too.”
When she kissed him this time, it was to demonstrate the sincerity of what she had just said. A few moments later, as she was leaning down to retrieve the book, a question occurred to her.
“You say the entire family’s going to Rhode Island?”
“Not Cooper, of course.”
“That’s what I meant. Was the choice to stay home his or your father’s?”
Cooper had visited Mont Royal two nights ago. He and Tillet had been unable to stay in the same room without quarreling violently over the Clay resolutions. Orry’s smile disappeared.
“Both,” he said.