by John Jakes
His weakness.
That situation would change, he vowed to himself as he stormed downstairs. He began screaming at the house men to fetch Nancy and Pete. They couldn’t be found.
An hour later, he realized they had run off. His wild rage grew wilder. He dispatched a boy to Francis’s house with instructions that a patrol be organized immediately. A patrol that would shoot the fugitives on sight.
They were glimpsed only once, two days later, crossing the Savannah River on a ferry. Somehow they had obtained forged passes. No one questioned their right to travel, and no one in the neighborhood of Resolute ever saw them again.
How long had she been locked up? Three days? No, four, she thought.
There was no way to find out what had happened to Nancy and Pete. She feared they had been tortured or killed. Light-headed, she was barely able to recall why she was worried about them. She slept during the day and roamed her room—her cage—at night. Outside the shuttered windows on the piazza, a man stood guard around the clock. Once a day, about sunrise, two house blacks came to the door. One kept watch while the other slid her day’s allotment of food inside. It consisted of three half slices of coarse brown bread. With them was a shallow bowl of water. During the few seconds the door was open, the slaves gave her swift, sorrowing looks, but they dared not say anything aloud.
She was permitted no water for washing. Each day she used a little from the shallow bowl. Even so, she soon began to smell. On the third day, while she slept, someone slipped in and emptied her brimming slops jar. By then her quarters had acquired the odor of a barn.
What did it matter? As each hour went by, she was less aware of her surroundings. Strange ringings in her ears distracted her. Strange lights, purple or fiery white, danced in the corners of the room—
Or were they in her head?
“Orry. Orry, why didn’t you come sooner?”
She saw him standing by the door, holding out his right hand while his eyes grieved. Thankfully, she rushed toward him. The instant she touched his hand, he vanished.
She started to cry. Some small, calm voice in the well of her soul said, How ashamed your father would be if he saw this.
She didn’t care. She was sick, spent, terrified. Her sobs soon changed to screaming.
“A nourishing meal—that’s what she needs.”
“Yes, Doctor,” Justin said in a solicitous tone, “but we’ve tried all week to persuade her to eat. She refuses.”
Justin and the physician looked at each other, their expressions the picture of sympathy and concern. Only their eyes communicated their true feelings.
Madeline saw that but failed to grasp its significance. She was semiconscious, lying in bed with her dark hair tangled on her shoulders and her eyes huge, childlike. Her face was the color of flour.
“Oh, I’m not surprised,” the doctor said with a sagacious nod. “That is a frequent symptom of nervous prostration.” He was a rotund, elegantly dressed man whose cheeks had the glossy look of success. His name was Lonzo Sapp.
“Fortunately,” he continued, “modern medicine can prescribe a treatment which is usually successful. Bed rest. Plenty of hot tea, then food when she feels better. I also want you to give her a generous dose of a special celery tonic once a day.”
“Celery tonic,” Justin repeated. “Is it your own formulation?”
Dr. Sapp nodded. “The base is wine vinegar, but the therapeutic ingredient is pulped celery.”
The physician leaned over the bed and brushed a lock of hair from Madeline’s brow. Her skin glistened in the light of the candles in a branched holder at the bedside. Smoothing and patting the hair above her brow, he resembled a kind father as he said, “If you can hear me, Mrs. LaMotte, I want you to know that you can soon be yourself again. Do you want that?”
Her thick, dry tongue inched over her cracked lower lip. She made no sound, staring at the doctor with tortured eyes that she closed briefly to signify assent.
“Then you must follow my regimen to the letter. It was your husband who summoned me from Charleston. He’s deeply worried about you. I have reassured him, but recovery is in your hands alone. Will you do everything I ask?”
“Y-yes.”
Justin bent and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. He felt much better, having found a remedy for the rebelliousness that had plagued their marriage. The remedy was also a way of repaying her for cuckolding him. He was positive she had done so last week and might have been doing so for years. She certainly went off by herself often enough.
By locking her up and starving her, he had broken all her defenses except one. Had that fallen, she would have confessed freely, would have told him where she had gone and with whom.
At first his failure to gain that information had driven him wild with anger. Then, seeing that she would ultimately defeat him, he turned her silence around and transformed it into a benefit. If he learned the name of her lover, he would probably be humiliated. Suppose it was some white trash tradesman or mechanic. Some nigger. Ignorance was preferable. Or so he said to himself on one level of his mind. On another, he conceived a new and permanent hatred of his wife.
But no sign of it showed as he straightened up beside the bed. Before coming in he had doused himself liberally with a cinnamonny skin tonic; she and the room smelled abominable. That could end now. He strode to the shutters and flung them back.
Cool night air gusted in, stirring the candles. Her eyes shone with gratitude. “She’ll be herself when she regains her strength,” Sapp assured him as they left. “It’s weakness which causes her disorientation.”
The doctor closed the bedroom door, glanced up and down the hall, and continued in a low voice, “After a week, she should be accustomed to the tonic. Not suspicious of it. You can then substitute the formulation we discussed.”
“The one containing the laudanum.”
“A small dose only. Nothing harmful, you understand. Just enough to keep her calm and agreeable.”
They strolled toward the head of the stairs. Dr. Sapp continued, “Should we wish to discontinue the tonic, there are other ways for her to receive the medication. Tinctured opium is a dark, sweetish liquid, but it can be baked into cookies, or employed to baste certain meats, or mixed with wine vinegar and poured over greens. What I’m saying is, the treatment is eminently flexible. Of course, if you’ve read de Quincey, you know there will be symptoms. Fatigue. Constipation. Possibly signs of premature aging. The symptoms are easily attributable to other causes, however. The stress and strain of daily living,” he said with a shrug. “She need never know that she’s receiving laudanum.”
“That is good news,” Justin declared with the fervency of a man who had stayed up all night and at last saw a prospect of rest. A sad smile settled on his face. “I’ve been so worried about her.”
“Naturally.”
“I want to do everything possible to soothe her nerves and restore her peace of mind.”
“An admirable goal.”
“So she won’t embarrass herself—or the family.”
“I quite understand,” murmured Dr. Sapp, his smile as thin as that of his host.
“One more question, Doctor. How long can the treatment be continued?”
“Why, if you’re happy with the results—a year. Two years. Indefinitely.”
Again the two men looked at each other, their unblinking stares communicating a perfect understanding. Chatting like old friends, they continued downstairs.
39
LATE IN MARCH 1855, Ashton’s marriage to James Huntoon was celebrated at Mont Royal. Orry thought it a dismal affair. Clarissa smiled at the bride but didn’t know who she was.
Ashton staged a nasty scene right after the ceremony. Up to that point, Huntoon had steadfastly refused to consider a wedding trip to New York, which was the only place Ashton wanted to go. She found no inconsistency in despising all Yankees while adoring their restaurants and theaters. To the very last minute, Huntoon insisted they were goi
ng to Charleston. Ashton threw a piece of cake at him, and pouted, and the sweating bridegroom quickly changed his mind, fearing that if he didn’t it would be weeks before he enjoyed his wife’s favors. By the time the carriage pulled away, Ashton was in a good mood again.
On top of all that, Cooper naturally outraged most of the male guests with his opinions. He repeatedly asked why neither abolitionists nor planters would give a moment’s consideration to the proposal Emerson had made to the New York Anti-Slavery Society in February. Emerson’s carefully worked-out scheme for gradual emancipation called for payments to slaveholders that would eventually total two hundred million dollars—small enough price for ending a national shame and preserving peace, he argued.
“Both sides jeered,” Cooper said. “Well, I can think of one explanation. The instant you do away with the reason for protest, the protesters are out of business.”
“Are you saying the fight for Southern rights is being made by cynical men?” a listener demanded:
“Some are sincere. But others want the abolitionists to continue to act in an extreme way. Only then can the South justify disruption of the Union, or a separate government—which of course is madness.”
They thought Cooper the mad one and a menace. Once he had been considered little more than a harmless nuisance, but that had changed. It had changed as a result of his continuing interest in Edmund Burke and Burke’s political wisdom. Cooper had taken that English statesman’s warning about apathy to heart, and he began to involve himself in the affairs of the Democratic party in Charleston.
He gained entrée to the party by a simple expedient. He donated several large sums for its work, so large that the leaders couldn’t afford to ignore him. Also, he was not the only man in the state expressing unpopular opinions about the way the South was going. Although there were not many who spoke out, there were enough for his presence at party meetings to be tolerated, if not welcomed.
He began to travel, to meet and confer with other moderate Democrats. In Virginia he was introduced to a man very much to his taste—a tall, blunt-jawed politician named Henry Wise who had ambitions to be governor. Wise was an outspoken defender of slavery, but he also believed that those who wanted to redress Southern grievances any way except within the framework of the Union were schemers—or idiots.
“Of course I understand why they do it,” Wise said. “They want to regain the power that has passed from the South to the North and West. Maybe they don’t even admit that to themselves. Hell, maybe they believe their own silly pronouncements. But they’re dangerous men, Cooper. They’re organized, active, vocal—and a threat to the entire South.”
Cooper smiled that wry, sad smile of his. “‘When bad men combine, the good must associate, else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice.’”
“Sage advice.”
“As it was when Burke first wrote it back in 1770. Trouble is, it’s been forgotten.”
“Not forgotten. The fire eaters would just prefer not to listen to it. The fire eaters on both sides.” Wise paused and studied the visitor. “I’ve heard about you, Cooper. You’ve been a pariah down in your home state for a long time. I’m glad you hied yourself back into the Democratic camp. We can use more like you—assuming that it isn’t already too late.”
Evidence said that it might be. Each side continued to defy the other.
Massachusetts passed a tough personal liberty law to protect all people, including blacks. The law was a reaction to the Burns affair the previous year. A fugitive slave, one Anthony Burns, had been detained at the Boston courthouse, where an abolitionist mob had attempted to rescue him and failed. Federal and state authorities had then cooperated to return Burns to his owner in the South.
In Kansas, meanwhile, a pro-slavery legislature had been elected with the help of so-called border ruffians from Missouri. They had streamed into the territory with rifles and pistols and had swung the outcome by means of intimidation and fraud. The fraudulently elected legislators had then passed laws establishing stiff penalties for anti-slavery agitation.
Month after month, both sides pushed bigger chips, and more of them, into the violent game. Missouri sent hordes of night riders over the border. The Northeast sent crates of weapons to arm the free-soil men. The crates were labeled as containing Bibles. This prompted Cooper to remark to some Democrats at a caucus in Columbia, “Even God has been recruited. In fact, each side is claiming He’s with them. Do you suppose He runs back and forth on alternate days? He must get mighty frazzled.”
No one was amused.
One afternoon at the C.S.C. dock, Cooper struck up a conversation with the dock foreman, a second-generation Charlestonian named Gerd Hochwalt. The foreman could be hard on malingerers, but personally he was a mild man with a generous disposition and strong religious beliefs. He had a wife, eleven children, and a house at the outskirts of town barely big enough to contain them.
Cooper and Hochwalt were soon discussing the recent anti-slavery convention at Big Springs, Kansas. Those in attendance had drawn up a plan for the territory to seek admission as a free state. They had also repudiated the laws enacted by the fraudulently chosen legislature sitting at Shawnee Mission. A particularly fiery Mercury editorial had condemned the action at Big Springs. Hochwalt praised the editorial.
“I read it,” Cooper said. “I found it nothing but the same old rhetoric.” As they talked, both men kept an eye on the lines of black stevedores filing aboard Mont Royal with bales marked for a Liverpool cotton factor. On this and every other trip the ship was loaded to capacity. And for each current customer, Cooper had three waiting. The packet line was showing a monthly profit of sixty to seventy percent. Even Orry had begun to take notice of the success.
Hochwalt yelled a reprimand to one of the stevedores who had stumbled and slowed up the loading. Then he wiped his perspiring neck with a blue kerchief and said, “The sentiments expressed by Mr. Rhett may be getting a bit shopworn, Mr. Main, but I believe in them.”
“How can you, Gerd? He was calling for a separate government again.”
“And why not, sir? For as long as I can remember, Northern people have scorned and insulted us. They think we’re dirt, every last one of us. A nation of brothel keepers! Isn’t that the term? Yet I have never owned a slave, or favored the institution, at any time in my life. The Northern abuse outrages me. If they don’t stop it, then by heaven we should go our own way.”
Emotionally, Cooper could understand Hochwalt’s feeling. Rationally, it was incomprehensible.
“You honestly don’t think men like Bob Rhett and James Huntoon and Mr. Yancey from Alabama are marching us along a path to a cliff?”
Hochwalt pondered. “No, sir. But even if they are, I’m inclined to go with them.”
“For God’s sake, man—why?”
The foreman peered at Cooper as if he were callow, not very bright.
“South Carolina is my home. Those men speak up for it. No one else does, Mr. Main.”
“I tell you, Orry, when Hochwalt said that, a chill came over me. My foreman is no wild-eyed revolutionary. He’s a solid, respectable Dutchman. If he and decent men like him are listening to the fire eaters, we’ve drifted farther than I ever suspected.”
Cooper made that statement a few nights later. Orry had ridden to Charleston to go over the books of the shipping company. He and Cooper had devoted most of the day to the work, and at the end Orry had declared himself pleased, even offering his brother a rare word of congratulations. Now the two of them were seated in comfortable chairs of white-painted wicker, looking out on the garden at Tradd Street. Little Judah, a chunky boy, was rolling a ball to the baby, Marie-Louise, who sat spraddle-legged on the thick Bermuda grass.
“Well,” Orry replied, “I try to pay as little attention as possible to that kind of thing. I’ve enough to think about.”
But you don’t find it very satisfying, Cooper said to himself as he noted the melancholy look in his brother’s eyes. Orry slo
uched in his chair, long legs stretched in front of him. He watched the children play in the gathering shadows. Was there envy in his expression?
In a moment Orry returned to the subject of the company. “I’m thankful the vessels are full every trip. The rice market in southern Europe is still depressed. Every month it falls a little more. You were wise to insist we diversify.”
Saying that, he sounded no different from the way he always did. Yet Cooper knew something was wrong. But he couldn’t identify the problem or the cause. He was about to ask Orry to do so when Judith came out of the house carrying a small parcel.
“A boy from the Colony Bookshop delivered this for you, Orry.”
“Oh—the book I asked for this morning. The shopkeeper was out of stock but expected a dozen copies by mid-afternoon.” He quickly unwrapped the parcel. When Judith saw the gold stamping, she clapped her hands in surprise.
“Leaves of Grass. That’s the book of verse Reverend Entwhistle preached against last Sunday. I read all about his sermon in the paper. He said the book was the work of a man who had abandoned reason and order, and it was filthy to boot.”
Cooper said, “The fellow’s receiving just as much hellfire from clerics up North—what’s his name?” He turned the book in his brother’s hand. “Whitman. Since when have you found time or a liking for modern poetry?”
Under his beard, Orry turned pink. “I bought it as a gift.”
“For someone at Mont Royal?”
“No, an acquaintance.”
Cooper didn’t press, but if he had, he wondered whether he might have discovered the reason for Orry’s bleak mood.
“Supper is nearly ready,” Judith said. “Rachel’s been picking blue crabs since early morning.” Rachel was the buxom free black woman employed as a cook. “I invited Ashton and James to join us, but they had another obligation. We seldom see them. Close as they are, they’ve never been here for a meal, I regret to say. Each time I ask, they’re busy.”
The Huntoons had moved into a fine, airy house on East Battery, a few doors below Atlantic. From there it was a short walk along Water and Church to Tradd Street. Orry had ridden past Ashton’s house on horseback, but he was curiously reluctant to call on his sister.