by John Jakes
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to help a murderer.”
Anxious looks flew between Brett and Constance. Virgilia pursed her lips.
“It’s to be expected that you would say something like that. Calling names is the chief means of discrediting anyone who speaks the truth about slavery or the South. Well, you and your kind should be warned. You won’t be practicing your barbarities or running your secret breeding farms much longer.”
“What the devil does that mean?”
“One day soon a messiah will lead your slaves in a great revolution. Every white man who doesn’t support it will be destroyed.”
Shocked silence. Even Brett was fuming. Orry’s anger, smoldering for days, burst into flame. He thrust his chair away from the table. Stiffly, he said to George, “Please excuse me.”
Constance gave her sister-in-law a stabbing look. Then she turned to Orry. “You shouldn’t be the one to leave.”
Virgilia smiled. “But of course he will. Southerners find the truth unbearable.”
Orry closed his hand on the back of his chair. “What truth? I’ve heard none at this table. I’m bone-weary of being treated as if I’m personally responsible for every offense committed by the South—either those that are real or those you’ve conceived in your deranged mind.”
Color rushed to George’s face. “Orry, that’s strong language.”
Orry barely heard. “Breeding farms! How do you come by these fantasies? Do you find them in yellow-backed novels?” George stiffened again at the reference to pornography. Orry’s voice rose. “Do they thrill you, arouse you? Is that why you constantly dwell on them?”
He was marginally aware of Constance herding the children from the room. Virgilia’s smile grew angelic. “I would anticipate a denial of evil from those who perpetuate it.”
The room seemed to tilt and blur. Orry could no longer tolerate the sound of her voice, impregnable in its smugness. Restraint departed, rage poured out.
“Woman, you’re mad!”
“And you are finished, you and your kind.”
“Shut up!” he shouted. “Shut up and go back to your nigger lover where you belong!”
As soon as the last word was out of his mouth, shame overwhelmed him. He felt as if the floor were sinking beneath his boots. Moments ago his vision had blurred. Now he saw faces with perfect clarity. Angry faces. The angriest belonged to George, who had torn the cigar out of his mouth and was squeezing it so hard the dark green wrapper cracked.
Virgilia struggled to maintain her false smile while Brett glared. Once more Constance attempted to restore peace:
“I think it’s you who spoke intemperately, Virgilia.”
Cold eyes fixed on George’s wife. “Do you?”
“Would an apology be so difficult?”
“Not difficult but unnecessary.”
Orry wanted to pick up his wineglass and hurl the contents in her face. Despite his shame, his wounded pride dominated. These people challenged, judged, and passed sentence on an entire social system and damned the good along with the bad. It was not to be borne.
He noticed George scowling at him and snapped, “I should think you, at least, would take issue with her conduct.”
George flung his broken cigar on the table. “I take issue with her choice of words, but she’s on the right side.”
George’s hostility went through Orry like a sword. The rift, long a fearsome possibility, had become inevitable. He collected himself, squared his shoulders, and spoke with stinging intensity.
“I don’t believe, sir, we have anything further to discuss.”
“That,” George said, “has become evident.”
Orry looked at him. It was impossible to deny the fury he saw on George’s face—or felt within himself. Never before had he and George Hazard been enemies, but they were enemies now.
“I must find my hat,” he said to his sister. “We’re leaving.”
Brett was unprepared for the announcement, speechless. He strode to her side, gripped her elbow, and steered her to the front hall. “Kindly deliver our luggage to the local hotel,” he said without looking back. A few seconds later, the front door closed with a click.
In the dining room the only person smiling was Virgilia.
George didn’t return to the mill that afternoon. He roamed the house, a cigar in one hand, a tumbler of whiskey in the other. He was mad at Orry, mad at himself, and didn’t know what to do next.
Virgilia vanished upstairs. Constance came down after seeing to the children. William ran outside, and Patricia went to the music room. It was here George found his daughter half an hour later. She was laboring through a minuet on the pianoforte.
Patricia saw her father standing in the doorway, looking glum.
“Papa, are you and Orry not friends anymore?”
That simple question jolted him, wrenched everything back into proper perspective.
“Of course we are. Orry will be back here before supper. I’ll see to it.”
In the library where he kept some writing materials he sat down, pushed the iron meteorite aside, and inked a pen. He wrote swiftly, commencing the note with the words: Stick—will you accept my apology?
“You want Mr. Main?” The clerk at the Station House consulted his ledger. “He took a room at the day rate for his sister, but I believe you can find him in the saloon bar.”
The servant from Belvedere pushed through the slatted swinging doors and crossed the deserted barroom to a table by the window. There a gaunt, bearded man sat staring into an empty glass.
“Mr. Main? From Mr. Hazard, sir.”
Orry read the note and briefly reconsidered his decision to leave on the evening train. Then he remembered the atmosphere at Belvedere and all the things that had been said. He couldn’t accept George’s apology or his invitation to return, as if nothing had happened. And if that scuttled the Star of Carolina, it was Cooper’s problem.
The servant cleared his throat. “Is there a reply, sir?”
“Just this.”
Orry tore the note and dropped the pieces into a brass spittoon.
“Goddamn him!” George exclaimed. “Can you believe what he did?”
“Yes,” Constance said. “You’ve described it ten or twelve times already.”
Teasing him did no good. Besides, she didn’t feel amused, although under happier circumstances she might have said her husband was a comical sight as he paced barefoot up and down the bedroom with his dead cigar clamped in his teeth and his slight paunch showing at the waist of his linen underdrawers, the only garment he was wearing.
“Of course I have,” George said. “I tender a perfectly sincere apology, and in return the son of a bitch insults me.”
The windows of Belvedere stood open to catch the autumn breeze. In cool weather George loved to sleep curled around his wife, and she loved having him there. But she doubted either of them would sleep much tonight. He had been cursing and fulminating ever since the servant returned from the Station House.
“You were just as hard on Orry, darling.” She sat against the headboard with her unbound hair spilling over the shoulders of her muslin gown. “There’s guilt on both sides—and it was really Virgilia who caused the whole thing. I will not tolerate her disruptions of this household indefinitely.”
He raked a hand through his hair. “Don’t worry, she’s already left for Chambersburg.”
“Of her own choice?”
“No, I insisted she go.”
“Well, that’s something.” Constance adjusted a bolster at the small of her back. The muslin gown stretched taut between her breasts. She began to brush her hair with slow, lazy strokes. She had reluctantly become convinced that Virgilia’s abusive behavior was incorrigible, had passed the edge of toleration. She wanted to say that George hadn’t solved the problem of his sister and wouldn’t until he turned her out for good. But this was not the moment to raise that issue.
“And Orry—has he left Lehigh Station
already?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t give a damn. I have a notion to write Cooper and call in my loan. I can find better things to do with two million dollars. Those bastards are probably building the flagship for a secessionist navy!”
“You’d accuse Cooper Main of that?” A gentle smile. “Now you’re sounding as unreasonable as your sister.”
George flung the dead cigar out the window. A whistle on the Lehigh line drifted up the hill, a mournful sound. “He didn’t even have the decency to reply.” Speaking to the dark outside, he sounded sad rather than angry.
“Darling, come here.”
He turned, a helpless, almost boyish expression on his face. He walked to the bed and sat down with the small of his back against her hip. His legs dangled over the side, not quite touching the floor.
Hating to see him hurting, she began to stroke his temple. “All of us behaved wretchedly today. Let Orry calm down for a week or so. You calm down, too. Then you’ll both feel like patching it up. You’ve been friends too long for it to go any other way.”
“I know, but he—”
Her fingers on his lips silenced the protest. “This afternoon you let a political fight come between you and the best friend you have in all the world. Do you realize how foolish that is? How ominous? How can this country survive if friends can’t rise above the quarrel? If men like you and Orry—decent, reasonable men—don’t find a solution to the problems, can you imagine the alternative? The future will be in the hands of the Southern fire eaters and the John Browns.”
The soft, soothing pressure of her fingers tamed his temper at last. “You’re right. Up to a point. I’m not sure words like fight and quarrel are truly adequate to describe what’s happening in this country.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“To me, words like fight and quarrel have a—well, almost a trivial sound. They suggest that people are falling out over”—a hand in the air helped him grope for the rest—“over hairstyles or the cut of a lapel. This argument runs much, much deeper. It goes all the way down to bedrock. Are you entitled to hold someone in bondage just because that person has black skin? Can you sunder the Union at will? I know my own answers to both of those questions. But not to this one: In the face of such issues, how can you stand up for what you believe and keep from losing a friend at the same time?”
Constance regarded him with loving eyes. “With patience,” she said. “Patience, and reason, and goodwill.”
He sighed. “I hope you’re right. I’m not sure.”
But he was grateful for her counsel and her help. To demonstrate that, he leaned against her bosom and gave her a long, tender kiss.
Soon the pressure of her lips increased. He slipped his hand between her back and the bolster. Arms around his neck, she kissed him with passion. Autumn wind blew the curtains as they made love, finding comfort in each other and temporary release from their confusion.
Afterward, lying pleasantly warm with their arms entwined, each was visited by the same unspoken thought: Patience, reason, and goodwill were fine, but were they sufficient? Perhaps the nation’s affairs were already past the point of rational control. Perhaps destiny was already in the hands of the fire eaters and the John Browns.
Yes, and the Virgilias, too.
51
SIMON CAMERON’S BAROUCHE CREAKED along Pennsylvania Avenue. Out for a bit of sightseeing with his mentor, Stanley basked in the pleasant sunshine.
The sound of Scala’s Marine Band playing “Listen to the Mocking Bird” slowly faded behind them. The composer of that piece of music had dedicated it to Harriet Lane, President Buchanan’s niece and hostess in the executive mansion. No doubt she and Old Buck—he was close to seventy now, an old-fashioned bachelor—were out on the lawn of President’s Park this minute, shaking hands with the audience at the band concert. The President was highly visible around Washington. Only yesterday, following a lavish dinner of oysters, terrapin, and French wine, Stanley had gone for a walk on this same avenue and bumped into the President, who was out for his daily one-hour stroll.
Made bold by the wine, Stanley had stepped up and spoken to Old Buck. Of course the two had met before, in Pennsylvania. The President not only recognized Stanley, but if a slight frostiness was any indication, he was quite aware of Stanley’s association with Boss Cameron. Thinking back to the encounter, Stanley remarked:
“I know the President’s no friend of yours, Simon, but he does come from our state. And when I met him again yesterday, I was frankly impressed with him.”
“Yes, but you have also told me you’re impressed with Washington.”
The sarcasm brought a flush to Stanley’s cheeks. He had said the wrong thing.
“Surely you can’t be impressed with that,” Cameron continued with a contemptuous gesture at the Capitol; its unfinished dome was topped by a crane and ugly scaffolding. Cameron sighed, shook his head. “How can I possibly make you a trusted associate if you continue to commit these errors in judgment? When will you learn there is nothing in this town worth a penny except the power?”
Stanley’s color deepened. He knew Cameron hadn’t befriended him because of his brains but only because he possessed certain other assets. Still, he hated to have his limitations discussed so openly or in such a caustic way.
But he mustn’t alienate his mentor. Momentous changes were in the wind, changes that could carry him and Isabel to this city and a position at the heart of the national government.
Cameron refused to let up. “Never let me hear you say you’re impressed with Old Buck. We’re Republicans now. The President is the enemy.”
Stanley nodded and forced a toadying smile, then tried to steer the conversation to a different tack. “What about next year? Do you think the Democrats will run Steve Douglas?”
“Hard to say. The party is badly split. Douglas alienated the entire South with his Freeport Doctrine.”
“Then we have a real chance to elect Seward.”
That very evening Stanley and Cameron were to attend a private reception for the senator at Kirkwood’s Hotel. The two men had traveled from Pennsylvania expressly to meet with Seward and with General Scott—gouty, opinionated, and, like the senator, smitten with presidential ambitions. Last night they had interviewed Scott for an hour; he had left his headquarters in New York just to see Cameron, another demonstration of the Pennsylvanian’s importance in Republican affairs. All this mingling with notables had an intoxicating effect on Stanley. He wanted to get back to Washington at all costs—as an insider.
Cameron reacted negatively to the mention of Seward. “After that remark about an irrepressible conflict, he can’t possibly win. Of course we mustn’t tell him so tonight, but the fact is the party will have to pick a man much less bellicose. One who offends the fewest people.”
Stanley blinked. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know yet. But I’ll tell you one thing”—a smile—”I’ll be the first to know his name. He won’t be nominated until I say so.”
Stanley knew the Boss wasn’t joking. Few Republican politicians could offer what he did—virtually absolute control of a large machine in an important state.
Cameron went on, “I intend to come out of the party convention with a job at Cabinet level. Any candidate who promises less won’t get my support. And when I move to this wretched town, my friends will move with me.”
Sunlight flashed in his eyes as he looked at Stanley. “I’m speaking of those friends who have proved their loyalty beyond all doubt.”
The message was clear, if familiar. Stanley asked, “How much do you need this time?”
“Ten thousand would help. Twenty would be ideal.”
“You have it.”
Beaming, Cameron leaned back on the plush cushions. “I knew I could count on you, Stanley. I’m sure there’s a job waiting here for a man of your intelligence.”
Billy rowed toward Bloody Island as the light faded. Brett sat at the bow facing
him, a parasol canted over her shoulder. He could hardly keep his eyes away from her or control a physical reaction to her presence.
He kept reminding himself that her brother expected him to behave like a gentleman. Not an easy task, given his months of loneliness out here and the heart-stopping beauty he saw in the tilt of her head and the curve of her bosom.
After nearly a week of traveling, Brett and Orry had arrived in St. Louis the day before yesterday. Almost at once, Brett told him about the quarrel at Lehigh Station. She said Virgilia had caused it, which disgusted Billy but didn’t surprise him. He and his sister had never been close. He often found it hard to believe she was a blood relation.
So far, Orry had chaperoned the young people in a very relaxed manner. On two previous occasions he had left them alone for over an hour, permitting them to wander where they would in the raw riverside town. Today, pleading a stomach upset caused by catfish he’d eaten at noon, he had remained at the hotel while Billy took Brett across the Mississippi on the ferry, then rented the rowboat. He wanted her to see what had kept him busy all these months.
Orry was certainly treating him politely and with consideration, Billy thought as the boat nosed through shallow water to the long shoal. Did that mean he had changed his mind about the match? Billy hoped so.
The boat crunched on the graveled bottom. Billy jumped out. Standing ankle-deep in the river, he extended his arms.
“Jump. You won’t get wet.” But he hadn’t beached the rowboat as firmly as he thought. When she stood up, the motion drove the boat away from him. “Wait, let me catch the bow line,” he exclaimed.
Too late. She jumped. He tried to catch her, but he was off balance. Down they went, the huge splash scattering dozens of small silvery fish.
“Oh, Lord,” she said in disgust. They sat on their rumps in five inches of water. Suddenly both of them started to laugh.