by John Jakes
Stanley spoke to Isabel. She ignored him. She was staring at Maude, who was seated on the side loggia of George’s house, dandling little William on her knee. Young Billy lounged close by. Isabel seethed. Maude never paid that kind of attention to Laban and Levi.
Constance looked happy. Happy. Somehow, her strength had undone the day’s victory. And it was now grimly clear to Isabel that Constance and her husband were working hard to turn Maude against Stanley.
From that moment, Isabel hated the two of them even more passionately than she had before.
“Another train derailed,” Constance said. “Four people killed. That’s the third wreck this month.” She shook her head and closed the paper.
George continued studying the architectural plans spread on the library table. Without looking up, he said, “The more miles of track that are built, and the more trains that are scheduled, the greater the chances for accidents.”
“Surely that’s too simple an explanation. I’ve heard repeatedly that half the accidents—or more—are preventable.”
“Well, perhaps. There are human errors in scheduling. Bad materials used on the roadbeds and rolling stock. It would help if all the railroads settled on a uniform gauge, too.”
He rose, stretched, then reached down to adjust the position of the object he kept on display on the table, as if it were some priceless antique. It was nothing more than the fragment of iron meteorite that he had found near West Point during his cadet days. He treasured it because he said it summed up the scope and meaning of his work. She noticed that he moved the meteorite no more than a quarter of an inch. She smiled to herself.
He walked to her chair and planted a kiss on her brow. “As Orry would say, I reckon progress always has its price.”
“You haven’t had a letter from Orry in quite a while.”
“Six weeks.” George strolled to the window. Outside, the lights of Lehigh Station blurred behind the first gentle snowfall. “I wrote to invite him to bring all the Mains to Newport next summer.”
In October, George and Stanley had visited the island in Narragansett Bay and had purchased a large, rambling house and ten acres of ground on Bath Road, within easy walking distance of a beach. A Providence architect had just submitted plans for extensive modernization of the house; these were the plans George was examining. The architect promised that the remodeling would be complete before the opening of the 1850 summer season.
“And you haven’t heard from him since then?”
“No.”
“Is anything wrong?”
“If there is, I’m not aware of it.”
“Newport is a Northern resort. Do you think he’ll accept the invitation?”
“I see no reason why he shouldn’t. People from South Carolina still flock to the place in the summertime.”
He wasn’t being completely honest with his wife. Orry’s infrequent letters, superficially pleasant, had a peculiar, bitter undertone. George was sensitive to it because he had known an earlier, more lighthearted Orry Main.
In the letters Orry had several times referred to his “perennial bachelorhood.” He only occasionally answered George’s guarded inquiries about M., and he sometimes jumped unexpectedly from a bit of innocuous news to what could only be termed a diatribe against anti-slavery forces in the North. He was particularly antagonistic toward the so-called free-soil political groups, which were seeking to ensure that new states or territories would prohibit slavery. He also referred scathingly to the Wilmot Proviso. Apparently the South would hold a grudge over that for a long time.
So, although George very much wanted to see his friend again, a part of him fretted about the eventual reunion.
In mid-December he received word that such a reunion would in fact take place. The news came on a fiercely cold day. That night George crawled into bed next to his extremely pregnant wife and, as usual, began a drowsy discussion of the day’s events.
“There was a letter from Orry.”
“At last! Was it cheerful?” Her voice had a breathy quality whose significance he failed to understand immediately.
“Not very. But he said he’d visit us next summer and bring as many of the others as he can persuade.”
“That’s—splendid,” Constance gasped. “But I think—right now—you’d better issue an invitation to Dr. Hopple.”
“What? It’s time? This minute? My Lord—that’s why you sounded so out of breath.”
He scrambled out of bed and in his haste stepped into the chamber pot. Fortunately it was empty. But it upset his balance and pitched him onto his back. “Ow!”
“Oh, good heavens,” she said, struggling to get up. “If you suffer and carry on this way, we’ll never be able to have any more children.”
At dawn she brought Patricia Flynn Hazard into the world with no great difficulty. George received the news in the library, where he sat smiling sleepily and rubbing his bandaged foot.
Billy, fourteen and growing taller every day, came home from boarding school over the Christmas holidays. He was impressed with his new niece and spent most of his time at Belvedere, even though all his belongings remained at Stanley’s.
Billy was feeling adult and independent. He frequently teased his mother with threats of an imminent departure to the California gold fields. Half the nation had succumbed to the fever. Why shouldn’t he?
”Because you don’t need the money, young man,” Maude responded on one occasion at the dinner table.
“Yes, I do. I haven’t any of my own.” Then, weary of the game, he ran to her chair and hugged her. “I don’t really want to pan for gold.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to hear about the fight at Churubusco again.”
Billy never tired of listening to the story. Telling it inevitably led George into a long, rambling account of his days at West Point. He enjoyed reminiscing by a roaring fire, and it was also a good way to keep his younger brother away from Stanley and Isabel for an extra hour. Stanley had grown sullen since the shooting incident, which had lately resulted in Brovnic’s imprisonment in Harrisburg. Isabel was as shrewish as ever. George deemed them bad influences. He was thankful Billy was off at school most of the year.
“Orry sounds like a fine person,” Billy said after one of George’s monologues about the Academy.
“He is. He’s also my best friend. You’ll meet him next summer, I hope.”
“Does he beat his niggers?”
“Why, I don’t think so.”
“He owns some, doesn’t he?” Billy’s disapproval was evident.
George frowned as he reached for the decanter of claret. It seemed there was no avoiding the issue.
“Yes, he owns quite a few.”
“Then I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think he’s as fine as you say.”
George suppressed annoyance. “That’s because you’re almost fifteen. No one your age ever agrees with adults.”
“Oh, yes, we do,” Billy shot back so quickly George burst out laughing.
Billy didn’t understand the joke. He went ahead doggedly. “I agree with all you say about West Point. It sounds like a wonderful place.”
George sipped wine and listened to the comfortable, familiar creaks and murmurs of the house. Families ought to have traditions, and he had just conceived of a splendid one. He didn’t want to promote it too directly to a headstrong adolescent, though. That would make it too easy for Billy to say no. He tiptoed around the subject:
“Oh, there were hard times. But you felt much more of a man when you survived them. There were a lot of great times, too. I made some good friends. Tom Jackson—he’s teaching at a military college in Virginia. George Pickett. Good friends,” he murmured again, gazing back over a short span of years that already seemed much longer. “And there’s no question that West Point provides the finest scientific education available in America.”
Billy grinned. “I’m more interested in fighting battles.”
George th
ought of the bloodshed at Churubusco and Orry’s arm blown away. Then you don’t understand what battle is really like. His smile fading, he kept the thought to himself. He let Billy make the suggestion, which he did, with some hesitancy, a moment later:
“You know, George, I’ve been meaning to ask what you thought of my chances—”
George concealed his elation. “Your chances for what?”
The boy’s eyes showed his admiration for his older brother. “For going through the Academy the way you did.”
“Do you think you’d like that?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Capital!”
Soldiering was a rough, sometimes damned unattractive trade. In the thick of the war he had found it disgusting and inhuman. He still did. Even so, a man could do no better, in this age and this nation, than to begin his adult life with West Point training. George realized he hadn’t always believed that, however. The fact that he now believed it without question was another change in his character that struck him as surprising.
“Of course there’s always fierce competition for the appointments,” he continued. “But you wouldn’t be ready to enter until—let’s see—three years from now. You’d be seventeen if you enrolled with the class of ’fifty-six. Ideal. I must see whether there’ll be a vacancy from the district. I’ll get to work on it immediately.”
And he did.
19
BY LATE 1849 PEOPLE along the Ashley had a saying about Orry Main: every month his beard got a little longer and his conversations a little shorter.
Orry never meant to be curt, just brief. In his head he was constantly sorting and organizing hundreds of details pertaining to the family and the operation of Mont Royal. Most of these details required him to take some action, which in turn had to be planned. Further, every week or so some kind of crisis required his intervention. Hence his time was short. He conserved it when he talked to others.
If neighbors and acquaintances took this to be a sign of a sullen streak—merely one more of those changes wrought by his war injury—that was fine with him. The reaction had a practical benefit. People didn’t expect him to chatter about his personal life, nor did they press him about a subject he found infuriating.
That is, no one pressed him except his father.
Tillet was nearly fifty-five now, gout-ridden and prickly-tempered. “Damn it, boy, you’re eminently marriageable,” he said one night in the library. “Why do you refuse to search for a wife?”
December rain pattered on the windows. Orry sighed and laid down his pen. He had been totting up figures from a ledger, one of several he had fetched from the office. Salem Jones was responsible for keeping the ledgers, something he’d been doing ever since Tillet’s health began to break down. In them were recorded the number of barrels in each shipment to Charleston.
After the harvest, Orry had chanced to glance into the ledger for the current year. The neatly inscribed figures somehow didn’t jibe with his intuitive feel for the number of rice barrels leaving the plantation. Didn’t jibe with a vivid picture of many more barrels piled up on the pier—which needed two pilings replaced, he recalled. He had been meaning to jot a reminder to himself for weeks. He did so now, before turning to his father.
“May I ask what brought up a question I thought we’d settled to everyone’s satisfaction?”
“To your mother’s, perhaps. Not mine.”
From his chair Tillet flourished the pages of Cooper’s latest letter. “Your brother is squiring eligible young ladies to all those Christmas parties and balls. Of course, if he ever grew serious about a girl, her father would probably send him packing because of his wild ideas. However, your brother’s marital status is of no interest to me. I cite him only as an example of what you should be doing. You—”
Tillet moved slightly, winced, and gripped his outstretched leg. A moment later he finished, “You should be wed and starting a family.”
Orry shook his head. “Too busy.”
“But surely you feel the need for companionship. A vigorous man of your age always—”
Orry smiled, which gave his father leave to stop. Tillet looked relieved. Orry said, “I take care of that, don’t worry.”
Tillet smirked. “So I’ve heard from several gentlemen in the neighborhood. But women of that sort—common women or those tinctured with a drop of nigger blood—they’re good for one thing only. You can’t marry someone like that.”
“I don’t intend to. As I’ve said many times before”—he touched his pinned-up sleeve with his pen—“I no longer consider myself fit to marry. Now I’d like to get back to work. I’ve found some damned odd discrepancies, going back as far as two and a half years.”
Tillet harrumphed, his equivalent of permission. His son had grown a mite gruff when he said he wasn’t fit to wed. Tillet had heard the excuse often, and much as he hated to admit it, he believed there was something to it. He knew what people along the Ashley thought of Orry. They thought the war had left him a little queer in the head.
There was ample evidence to support the contention: The way Orry went about his duties at Mont Royal, as though he were driven to prove himself the equal of any uninjured man. His clothes, always too heavy and somber for the climate and mood of the low country. His brusque manner. That damn beard, so long and thick chickadees could nest in it.
Once, out by the entrance to the lane, Tillet had been returning from Charleston in his carriage at the same time Orry was riding away on some errand. Three of the gardeners, scything weeds, had stared at Orry when he cantered by. The slaves had exchanged looks; one had shaken his head, and another had actually shivered. Tillet had seen it and been saddened. His son had become a strange, even frightening figure to others.
Of course the deficiencies had to be kept in perspective. Odd as Orry might be, he pleased Tillet far more than Cooper did. Cooper had jumped right into management of the little shipping line, and he was doing well at it. But he continued to express offensive, not to say downright traitorous, opinions.
Lately there had been a lot written about several resolutions old Henry Clay planned to introduce in the Senate early next year. Clay hoped to prevent a further widening of the rift between the North and the South. The Union, thirty states strong, was delicately balanced. Fifteen states practiced slavery; the other fifteen did not. Clay wanted to throw some bones to each side. He proposed to align the new state of California on the Northern side, with the stipulation that slavery not be permitted there. Southerners would receive a pledge of noninterference with interstate slave traffic, as well as a more effective fugitive slave law.
If Tillet had been required to isolate the foremost cause of his animosity toward the North, he would instantly have named the fugitive slave issue. The fourth article of the Constitution specifically stated that a man had the right to recover any slave who ran away. It also said that laws in force in a state that did not practice slavery had no effect on this right. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had been written to implement the Constitution. And ever since, the high-minded hypocrites up North had sought ways to water down or completely circumvent the law of the land.
Tillet opposed Clay’s compromises. So did a great many Southern leaders, including Senator Jeff Davis of Mississippi and Senator John Calhoun. Clay did have the famous and influential Senator Webster on his side. But he was opposed by various abolitionist hatchet men, Senator Seward of New York being perhaps the most extreme. For once Tillet was grateful to that crowd.
Cooper believed the much-debated compromises were reasonable and badly needed. In Tillet’s opinion, what was badly needed was a horsewhipping for Cooper.
While those thoughts were passing through Tillet’s mind, Orry was recalling his father’s remark about people in the neighborhood knowing he carried on with women. He was delighted to hear that. It meant his plan had worked. Over the past year he had taken a succession of mistresses, the latest a mulatto seamstress he had met on a visit to Charleston. He
took pains to keep this activity discreet, but not secret.
The women gave him the one thing that Madeline, by the terms of their agreement, could not. But he wouldn’t have entered into the affairs just to fulfill that need, although Tillet obviously thought otherwise. Orry took up with various women so that people would notice and would therefore be less likely to connect each occasional unexplained absence from Mont Royal with Madeline’s absences from Resolute on the same day. Protecting her from suspicion was almost as important as seeing her regularly.
Pleased that the deception was successful, Orry went back to the ledgers. He had stumbled onto something with a decidedly fishy odor, and he concentrated on it for the next half hour while Tillet dozed into a gleeful dream-fantasy in which a mob stoned Senator Seward.
A sound like a pistol shot jerked Tillet awake; Orry had closed a ledger with a snap. He stood with the book clutched in his hand.
Tillet rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Plenty. We’ve been harboring a thief. He’s repaid your trust and kindness with deceit. I never liked the bastard. I’m going to get rid of him right now.”
“Who?” Tillet said, still sleepy and confused.
At the door Orry turned. “Jones.”
“But—I hired him. You can’t just throw him out.”
“I beg to differ sir,” Orry said in a voice so low and hard that the older man could barely hear it above the sound of the rain. “I’m in charge of this plantation now. You’ll agree with my decision when I show you the proof. But even if you don’t, Jones is through.”
Orry stared at his father. Not angrily, just steadily. The beard, the eyes, the tall, gaunt frame, and the empty sleeve—they had a queer effect on Tillet all at once. He felt he was arguing with a stranger, and a frightening one at that.
“Whatever you say,” he murmured. His son gave a crisp little nod and went out.
Orry walked to the overseer’s house with the ledgers clutched under his arm and an old cloak belling behind him. Rain collected in his hair and beard. He took long, swift strides and was so intent on his errand that he didn’t notice Cousin Charles lounging on the dark porch of one of the slave cabins.