by John Jakes
George’s shoulders were thrown back. He looked pugnacious and powerful as he raised the Colt repeater and extended his arm. With the muzzle pointed at the forehead of the man who had just spoken, he thumb-cocked the gun.
“Take him. I guarantee you and a few others won’t survive the attempt.”
Orry stepped to the left of his friend, within a couple of feet of the men crowding the steps. He thought he recognized two of the loungers from the hotel.
“Let’s rush him,” someone else yelled.
George pointed the Colt at the shouter. “Come on. It’s an old military axiom. The One who gives the order leads the charge.”
“Damn it, Hazard,” another man exclaimed, “he’s a Southron. A palmetto-state man. All we want to do is show him what we think of disunionists—traitors.”
“This gentleman’s no traitor. We, graduated in the same West Point class, then went all the way to Mexico City with General Scott. My friend fought for this country just as hard as I did, and that empty sleeve shows you the reward he got. I know most of you. I don’t want the death of a single one of you on my hands. But if you mean to harm an honorable man like this, you’ll have to remove me first.”
The noise level dropped. Orry saw eyes shift from George’s gun to other parts of the porch. Some in the crowd were estimating how they might flank the pair and thus overcome them. A couple of men slipped away from the back of the mob, but George quickly covered them.
“The first to move will be the first to fall.”
The two men held still. Five seconds became ten. Fifteen—
“We can take them” a voice growled. But there was no response. Orry’s heart was pounding. It could go either way—
“Hell,” someone said. “It ain’t worth gettin’ killed.”
“That shows good sense,” George said, still with a feisty tone. “If that’s the attitude of the rest of you, you’re free to move. Just make sure you move away from the porch, down the hill and off my property.” He paused, then stunned them by shouting in his best West Point voice, “Get going!”
They responded to the command and the threat of the Colt. By ones and twos they shuffled away, leaving only a few oaths in their wake.
A minute went by. Another. Orry and George stayed on the porch, alert in case the mob’s mood changed again. Finally George lowered the Colt and slumped against a pillar.
“Close,” he said softly. “But we’re not out of the woods yet. Fetch your valise while I send someone for the buggy. The sooner we get you on a train, the better.”
Orry didn’t argue.
One servant drove, another rode astride the buggy horse. Each man carried a gun, as did George: He had already started a search for the servant who had taken Virgilia’s message to the mob. The man would be sent packing.
George and Orry were still shaken by the confrontation: George sat in preoccupied silence as the buggy bumped its way down the hill. Presently Orry said, “What are you thinking about?”
“These foul times. We might have prevented all this if we’d responded with the best that’s in us. Instead, we seem to have responded with the worst. I wonder if we’re capable of anything else.”
Silence again. Orry tried to lighten the moment by telling his friend what he’d had no chance to tell him before—that Madeline was with him at last and would remain. When the future was a little less cloudy, they planned to consult a lawyer and obtain a divorce for her.
“That’s fine, splendid,” George murmured as the buggy passed some outlying houses. His eyes, ceaselessly moving, swept shadowed stoops, yellow-lit windows, then the street. Abruptly he leaned forward. Ahead, silhouetted against the lamps of the hotel and depot, four men had stepped into the street to await the buggy.
“Look sharp, you two,” George called to his men.
Panting, Virgilia ran along the path that led over the hill behind Belvedere. She didn’t dare flee into town; George had gone in that direction.
Brambles snagged her skirt and slashed her hands, which were clasped tightly around the handle of a huge, bulging carpetbag. She was a strong woman, but even so she could barely carry the bag, which gave off clanking sounds each time it bumped her leg.
She had returned to the mansion once too often. She knew that now. Never again would she set foot in Lehigh Station.
And why should she? She hated the whole family. Pompous little George and priggish Stanley, their wives, their precious white-skinned children. They understood nothing of the struggle taking place in the world. They pretended to be in sympathy with it, but they had no real appreciation of its hardships and cruelties. They were pampered hypocrites, the lot of them.
Her loud, rapid breathing sounded like sobbing. Suddenly she stumbled, fell. But she never once let go of the carpetbag.
She regained her feet and hurried on. No one was pursuing her, but she labored up the steep hillside as if the opposite was true. When George had looked at her, too overcome to speak, she had known she must run.
Her shoulders and upper arms already ached horribly. She had stuffed too many things into the carpetbag before leaving the house: candlesticks, silver, garments from Constance’s wardrobe, and several of her most valuable pieces of jewelry—items Virgilia could readily sell to obtain money to live.
She didn’t consider it stealing, only payment of what was rightfully hers. George and Stanley had always demeaned her because she was a woman. Their scorn had grown worse when she took a black lover. One day, she vowed as she panted her way to the hilltop, she’d pay them. She’d pay them all.
The buggy rolled on toward the waiting men. They remained in the middle of the street. George touched the driver’s arm.
“Don’t stop, and don’t go around them. Hand me your gun.”
The driver gave George his Colt. The only sounds for about half a minute were the clopping of hooves and the faint squeak of a rear axle. George held his breath and raised the two guns so that they could be clearly seen.
When the muzzle of the horse was within a yard of the silent men, they stepped aside.
In the dim light, Orry recognized two who had been in the mob at Belvedere. One of them spat on the street while staring straight at him. But Orry was past all anger, too spent to react. The buggy rolled on.
“Made it!” George exclaimed with a tense smile.
They waited almost an hour inside the depot, with the two servants on watch outside. Nothing further was seen of the troublemakers.
George now seemed as exhausted as his friend. Their conversation was fitful. Orry brought up Elkanah Bent, but George immediately dismissed the subject with a weary wave. Now that war had come, he said, there were far worse things to fear than one deranged officer. Billy had been warned, George intended to put Bent out of mind permanently, and that was that.
Silence ensued. Like George, Orry too wondered how they had come to such a point of crisis in the country. Where had they failed? What had they left undone? Some solutions had been proposed but never seriously considered. The plan of compensated emancipation put forth by Emerson and others. Resettlement of freed slaves in Liberia so as not to flood the industrial North with cheap labor. Had there been even a faint hope of those ideas being implemented? Would Garrison and Virgilia have consented? Or Calhoun and Ashton’s husband? He didn’t know. He never would.
The rails lit up as the locomotive loomed. The station agent had flagged the freight. George accompanied Orry to the spot on the platform where the caboose was likely to stop.
“Special passenger,” George explained to a pair of puzzled brakemen. He pressed money into their hands. He was about to bid his friend good-bye when his eye lit on Orry’s crudely made rosette. “Just a minute.”
He unfastened the rosette and tossed it away. Then he took off his own and pinned it on Orry’s lapel.
“You might as well wear one that looks genuine. I’ll be damned if I want to be responsible for them lynching you in Maryland.”
They embraced. Orry boarded the tra
in.
68
ORRY REACHED PHILADELPHIA THE next morning. He left for Washington at four in the afternoon. A hard rain was falling. He sat with his forehead against the wet window, almost like a man in a trance. One memory, one image, sustained him now: Madeline.
Presently, after darkness fell, the train jerked to a halt. Lamps burned on a rickety platform. By their light he saw a northbound train standing on the other track. Passengers were crowding the platform, taking the opportunity to escape the smoky cars for a little while. Those around Orry got up to do the same. He felt no inclination to move.
“Where are we?” he asked a conductor.
“Relay House.”
“Why are both trains stopped?”
“To pick up passengers from a local from the east shore. There’ll be some people going north, some going south.”
“That’s fitting,” Orry said. The conductor looked at him as if he were unbalanced.
Staring into the rain, Orry suddenly spied familiar faces. He jumped up, took three long strides down the aisle. Then, abruptly, he halted.
Bending to peer through another window, he studied his sister and her husband. Would he compromise the young couple or create danger for them if he spoke to them? Billy was in uniform.
He let out an oath. For a second he had started to think like the mob: If you’re a Southerner, you’re a traitor. He walked quickly to the head of the car.
Rain struck his face as he worked his way across the platform. “Brett? Billy?”
Surprise and confusion registered on the faces of the young couple when they recognized him. A few people gave him suspicious looks, but his rosette reassured them.
“What in the world are you doing here?” Brett exclaimed.
“Going home. I paid a visit to Lehigh Station. George said he was expecting you any time.”
“I’m on leave,” Billy said. “After that, everything’s pretty uncertain.”
“How’s your arm?”
“Fine. No permanent damage.” He circled Brett’s waist and held her. “Those two or three hours after the wedding seem more like a bad dream than anything else. To this day I’m not sure why all of it happened.”
“Nor I,” Brett added. Orry still didn’t know whether he’d ever be able to tell her of Ashton’s involvement.
She noticed his rosette. “Where did you get that? You haven’t undergone some miraculous conversion, have you?”
“Not quite. George gave it to me. To get me through enemy lines, you might say.”
The east-shore local was chugging in. Passengers got off and rushed for the other trains with their luggage. “How is George?” Brett asked.
“Good as ever.”
She touched him gently. “How are you?”
“Better than I ever expected to be. I reckon you don’t know Madeline LaMotte left her husband. She’s staying at Mont Royal. We’ve been—friends for years.”
Brett showed no surprise. Instead, she smiled. “I suspected something like that. Oh, there’s so much to ask you, Orry—I can’t think of a quarter of it.”
A conductor from the northbound train called impatiently, “All aboard, please. We’re half an hour late as it is.”
Brett flung her arms around her brother’s neck. “When will we see you again?”
“Not for a while, I expect. I don’t think even Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Davis knows what’s going to happen next. Whatever it is—even if there’s fighting—I want the Hazards and the Mains to keep their ties unbroken. There are few things in the world that matter as much as friendship and love. They’re both very fragile. We must preserve them till these times pass.”
“I promise we will,” she said, all at once crying.
“Here’s the strongest bond yet. “ Billy lifted her left hand to display her wedding ring.
Orry nodded. “I finally realized that. It’s the reason I changed my mind about the marriage.”
“I’m glad you did,” Billy said, smiling.
“Boooard!” the conductor cried. His colleague on Orry’s train repeated the cry. The northbound conductor jumped to the steps of a coach and waved to the engineer. The noise—steam, bells, voices—instantly increased.
Billy and his brother-in-law shook hands. Orry hurried back to his car. Steam billowed up, hiding the platform that had become deserted within a space of seconds. The engine on the northbound track lurched, and soon both trains were pulling away in opposite directions, leaving the little island of light behind as they gathered speed in the vast dark.
In Washington, Orry again changed trains, this time to an express. Just before it departed, four men got aboard, young men in civilian clothes struggling with a great assortment of valises and parcels. From their posture and the way they moved, Orry knew they were soldiers. Southern soldiers going home.
They took seats two rows behind him. He listened to their conversation. Would Lincoln and Jeff Davis send armies into the field? Would the trains soon stop running? Would new currency be printed in Montgomery? Their questions were innumerable, answers nonexistent.
The rain slacked to a drizzle. Chugging slowly through the seedy capital district, the train crossed some of the sloughs and vacant lots so common there. In one weed-grown field Orry saw a military unit drilling. There were a few lanterns scattered here and there, but the dark figures were discernible chiefly because of a faraway light source, indefinable except as a bright, ghostly glow. He saw rows of bayonets on musket barrels; for an instant while he watched, one bayonet glittered like a star.
The militia was marching and counter-marching in the rain because Washington was vulnerable now. Just across the river was Virginia, the country of the enemy.
Where was Lee? Where were some of Orry’s old comrades from Mexico? Little Mac McClellan, whom he had envied but never liked. Jackson, who had gone off to teach cadets at the Virginia Military Institute. Breezy George Pickett, such a good soldier and so seldom serious. How he’d love to see some of them again.
But not on a red field. Not if opposing generals arranged the reunion. Men who had been almost as close as brothers at the Academy might at this very moment be planning campaigns to annihilate one another. It was unthinkable, and it had happened.
He saw it all summed up in the blind marching of that nameless unit, a vision of gaunt shapes, sharp shiny steel, dim lamps flaring in the rain. The war machine was rolling. God help us all, he thought.
A light rain was falling on Tradd Street that night. Cooper wrote a letter he had been thinking about for some time. When he finished, he went searching for his wife. He found Judith just coming down from settling the children in bed. With war fever sweeping the state, Judah and Marie-Louise tended to become overly excited and stay up too late.
Without preamble, Cooper announced his decision. Judith’s response was a moment of stunned silence. Then:
“Do you mean it?”
“I’ve already signed the letter to the gentlemen who called on me. I’ll send it to Montgomery tomorrow. After the first of May, all the assets of the Carolina Shipping Company, including our vessels, belong to the Navy Department.”
She shook her head as she sat down. “How can you make that decision, believing as you do?”
“Neutrality is the coward’s way out. We either support the war or move north. I think secession’s wrong, and the institution that brought it about is even worse. I think we’ll be punished. Crushed. And yet”—a troubled look, a gesture—”I feel a loyalty, Judith.”
She looked skeptical. He drew a breath. “There’s one other part of my discussion with the committee members that I didn’t tell you about. They asked me to go to London as an agent for the department.”
“London? Why?”
“Because they know the Confederacy can’t survive without food and manufactured goods supplied by others. Mr. Lincoln knows it too. Blockade is a weapon the Yankees will surely use against us. When it happens, there must be counterstrokes. A ship like the Star of Carolina—
”
“What are you talking about?” Judith exclaimed, angered and upset. “She’ll never get off the ways!”
“I said one like her. Designed to carry heavy armament. Designed for war. A commerce raider. She would roam the earth and do inestimable damage to Yankee shipping.” He glanced at his wife from under his eyebrows. “Because of my experience here in Charleston, the department wants me to investigate the possibility of constructing such a vessel in Britain.”
“That means we’d have to take the children.”
“And be prepared to stay a year, perhaps more.”
“Oh, Cooper, how can we? The cause is wrong!”
“If not already lost,” he said with a nod. A flaming vision of Hazard Iron floated in his thoughts. “Still, even though I can’t explain my reasons fully or adequately, I feel I must go. No, let me be completely truthful. I want to go.”
Again she searched his face. “All right. I detest the idea, and I fail to understand your logic—if there is any. But you know I’d never desert you. I suggest you book steamer passage.”
“I already have. We leave from Savannah a week from Friday.” He took her in his arms and held her while she cried. Next morning, at the yard on James Island, he saw to the erection of a tall iron pole. When the pulleys and halyards were in place, he watched two of his men unfold a huge flag. It consisted of three broad bars running horizontally; the top and bottom ones were red, the center one white. A field of deep blue in the upper left held a circle of seven white stars.
He was struck by the resemblance between the new flag and that of the nation the seceding states had left. Even while we trumpet our independence, we can’t bring ourselves to cut all the cords, he thought as the Stars and Bars rode up the pole, caught the wind, and spread against the sky.
69
EARLY NEXT DAY, ON a primitive road in south-central Alabama, a closed carriage bumped toward Montgomery. A dozen trunks and valises crowded the boot and the top. Rex was driving. Inside, Huntoon labored at a polished-oak lap desk. He had finally been summoned to take a minor governmental post, which satisfied him for the moment. Both his post and his influence would not remain minor for long. At that he had been more fortunate than many of the other leaders of South Carolina. Bob Rhett, for example, had been rejected as a candidate for president of the Confederate States because he was perceived as too extreme.