by John Jakes
The moment they were outside, he exclaimed, “God, I’m sorry she said all those things. I don’t know what pleasure she derives from being rude.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Cooper walked across flagstones to the edge of the terraced lawn. To his right the three furnaces stained the night sky red.
“I will worry about it! I don’t want Virgilia offending you, and I certainly don’t want her offending your family this summer. I’ll have a talk with her.” His determination shaded into puzzlement. “She’s my sister, but I’ll be hanged if I understand her. Every time she rants about slavery and the South, she puts it in—well, physical terms. Somehow she’s gotten the notion that the entire South is one heaving sea of fornication.”
He shot a quick look to see whether Cooper was shocked. Cooper was thinking. People often condemned that which they secretly desired.
“She’s gotten too involved in her cause,” George grumbled. “Sometimes I fear it’s affecting her mind.”
I fear you may be right, Cooper thought, but kept it to himself.
That ended the incident. He left in the morning, without seeing Virgilia again. Soon the memory of her wrathful eyes faded a little as he examined his own rather surprising reactions during the exchange. He had been outraged by her statement; outraged as a member of the Main family and, yes, as a Southerner, too.
Cooper considered himself a temperate man. If he could be aroused by a Yankee fanatic, how much more angry would the Southern hotspurs become? And to what sort of violent response would that anger propel them? That was the aspect of last night’s display that disturbed him most.
He first saw the girl on deck about an hour after the coastal steamer left New York for Charleston. She was in her twenties and evidently traveling alone. A tall girl with thin arms and legs, a flat bosom, and a long nose. A great deal of curly, dark blonde hair showed beneath her hat. She walked slowly along the rail, then stopped and gazed at the ocean. Her poise and self-assurance suggested familiarity with the world, experience in dealing with it by herself. He stood covertly watching her from a respectful distance.
Her gaze seemed kind and her mouth had a friendly look, as if she smiled a lot and did so naturally. Yet an objective observer would have to say that all the girl’s features, taken together, yielded plainness at best, homeliness at worst. Why, then, did he find her so striking? He didn’t know, nor did he care about an explanation.
Shortly he noticed another man watching the girl, and less discreetly. The man was fat, middle-aged, and wore a checked suit. Cooper was annoyed and then disappointed when the girl strolled off. If she was aware of the attention of the fat fellow, she gave no sign.
In a moment she was out of sight. Cooper knew he must meet her. But how? A gentleman simply didn’t accost a young woman to whom he hadn’t been introduced. He was still struggling with the problem when a black steward rang the dinner gong.
In the dining saloon, he was infuriated to see that chance had placed the girl at a table with the man in the checked suit. The man was no gentleman. He crowded his chair closer to hers, ignoring the raised eyebrows of the four other passengers sharing the table. He repeatedly bumped her forearm with his hand as they ate. And several times he leaned over too intimately, offering some witticism that she greeted with a polite smile. She ate rapidly and was the first to leave the table. Moments later, Cooper raced on deck to search for her.
He discovered her at the starboard rail watching the distant dunes on the Jersey shore. I’ll do it, and damn the risk, he thought. He cleared his throat and squared his shoulders. Bees swarmed in his stomach. He walked toward her, fully intending to speak. She turned, taking note of him in a friendly way. He stopped, reached for the brim of his hat, then realized he had left the hat in his cabin. His opening remark died in his throat.
He uttered the only greeting he could muster—a kind of grunt—and rushed on by. Idiot. Idiot. Now she’d never speak to him, and he couldn’t blame her. He had wanted to make a good first impression, somehow conveying to her that he was polite and even shy—qualities he felt she might like, if she were only given the opportunity to notice them. Inexperience had undone him. All she had seen was a fool who didn’t say hello, just grunted.
He decided he wouldn’t attend the evening entertainment, but at the last minute he changed his mind, joining a crowd of about thirty people in the main saloon. The purser, a cheerful Italian, announced that a special program had been substituted for that originally scheduled. It had been discovered that one of the passengers had musical talent, and she had been persuaded to perform. The purser would accompany her on the piano. He presented Miss Judith Stafford of Boston.
Miss Stafford rose. It was the girl. She had been seated in the first row where Cooper couldn’t see her. She was still wearing the same plainly cut black dress he had first observed on deck. He felt sure it was her “good dress.” Every woman had one, usually of silk.
He sat enthralled as she announced her first selection, an aria from Norma. She sang in a sweet soprano, with phrasing, gestures, and expressions that bespoke professional training. She performed three other selections, all operatic; the last one was a showy, stormy one from Verdi’s Attila.
With each note, Cooper fell more deeply in love. He got a jolt when he noticed a spectator sidling along the wall toward the front. The chap in checks. Reeling slightly—and not because of rough water. The sea was calm tonight. The fellow’s lascivious eyes showed what interested him. It was not Miss Stafford’s talent.
The audience responded to her final aria with thunderous applause and demanded more. She conferred with the purser, then delighted the crowd with a lively rendition of “Oh! Susanna,” the Negro ballad adopted by the California gold seekers. Again the audience wanted an encore. She sang the ten-year-old favorite, “Woodman, Spare That Tree.” Her performance brought tears to the eyes of several in the audience.
But not to the eyes of Mr. Checks, as Cooper had taken to calling him. All that glittered in his repulsive little orbs was lust.
After giving the girl a final ovation, the audience dispersed. The purser thanked her and bustled off, leaving her alone and abruptly aware of Mr. Checks weaving in her direction, a smarmy smile on his face. Cooper found himself propelled toward the pair like a rocket. He’s probably a professional bare-knuckle fighter. If you interfere, he’ll pulverize you—and she’ll still think you’re a clod.
Despite this pessimistic appraisal, he didn’t change course but sped straight to the front of the saloon. Mr. Checks had come to a halt six feet to Miss Stafford’s left, blinking witlessly. Cooper seized the girl’s elbow.
“That was utterly charming, Miss Stafford. I now claim the reward of that stroll you promised me earlier.”
She’ll scream for help, he thought. “Here, wait,” said Mr. Checks, hurrying toward them and falling headfirst over a large leather chair he had failed to see.
Judith Stafford shone that bright smile on Cooper. “I remember, and I’ve been looking forward to it.”
His heart nearly stopped as she linked her arm with his. She let him guide her outside. The moment they were on deck, she gave his forearm an impulsive squeeze.
“Oh, thank you. That lizard has been eyeing me ever since we left New York.” She withdrew her hand. “I don’t mean to be forward, but I’m very grateful to you, Mr.—”
She hesitated. Could he believe what he was hearing?
“Cooper Main of Charleston. Are you by chance from South Carolina?”
“I’m from the village of Cheraw, up country. I am going home for a visit. I thank you again for your assistance, Mr. Main. Good evening.”
Lose her now and she’s lost for good. He seized her hand and once more linked her arm with his.
“Miss Stafford, I demand my reward. That stroll we discussed—oh-oh, there he is. This way.”
They sailed past a porthole from which a dejected Mr. Checks was peering. He didn’t come on deck or bother them for the rest of the v
oyage. So much for fears of bare-knuckle prowess.
Judith Stafford laughed at Cooper’s audacity. But she held fast to his arm, and they walked briskly toward the stern in the moonlight. He was so happy, if she had told him to jump overboard, he’d have done it. He’d have done it even though he couldn’t swim six feet.
They spent most of the following day together. Cooper knew she probably did it because she thought him a safe companion, one whose presence would keep less trustworthy men at a distance. He only hoped companionship could ripen into friendship before they reached Charleston. After a day’s shopping there, she planned to travel on to Cheraw by rail and public coach.
She had been born in the foothills of the South Carolina mountains, the only child of a farm couple. Her mother was dead, and her father now lived in Cheraw with a relative; an accident with a plow had crippled him two years ago.
“My father is Welsh and Scotch and a few other things besides,” she said as they sat sipping bouillon late in the morning. “Born a Carolina yeoman, and he’ll die as one. When he worked his land, he did it all by himself unless he happened to have the help of some neighbors he later repaid in kind. He detests the rice and cotton planters because they can succeed only by using armies of slaves. He also detests them because there are so few of them, yet they have absolute control of the state. As a matter of fact, that control is one of the reasons I moved away five years ago, when I was twenty-one.”
“There are a great many farmers up country who share your father’s feeling, aren’t there?”
“Thousands. If it were up to them, slavery would be abolished in a minute.”
“To be followed by a black uprising the next minute?”
“Oh, that’s just an excuse,” she said with a toss of her head.
“Well, I hear it often.” He swallowed and put the truth before her. “My family has planted rice and owned slaves for generations.”
She uttered a little gasp of surprise. “You told me your name, but I never connected it with the Mains of Mont Royal.”
“Because I said I live in Charleston, which I do. I left home myself, year before last. My father and I don’t agree on any number of things. One is our peculiar institution.”
“Do you mean to say you oppose it?”
“I do. On practical as well as moral grounds.”
“Then we think alike.”
“I’m glad, Miss Stafford.” He felt himself blushing.
Her brown eyes lighted with a look he had thus far only dreamed of seeing there. Suddenly every memory of the fiery furnaces of Lehigh Station was gone, and the future looked altogether different.
“Please,” she said. “Won’t you call me Judith?”
Cooper could speak forcefully when he had to, but it always required effort. She had the same shy disposition. Perhaps that was the reason the bond between them was so immediate and so strong.
On the voyage to Charleston, he told her a great deal about himself. She reciprocated. Her father believed in the importance of education and had saved all his life to make hers possible. She had gone north to complete the last two years of her schooling at Miss Deardorf’s Female Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, and after graduation had been invited to remain as a teacher of music and literature.
Strictly speaking, then, she wasn’t from Boston, but she went into the city as often as possible. She belonged to the Federal Street Church and shared the moderate abolitionist views of its pastor, the Reverend William Ellery Channing.
“A Unitarian, eh?” Cooper grinned. “We’re taught to believe most of them have horns.”
“Some are much more radical than others. Dr. Emerson, for example. He had the pulpit at Boston’s Second Church until his conscience would no longer permit him to administer the Lord’s Supper. He’s a bit too esoteric for my tastes, although he’s unquestionably a man of great moral conviction. He lives in Concord, you know. I see him several times a week. But of course I wouldn’t dare speak to him.”
She loved the little village where Yankee farmers had first fired at King George’s men. Several famous people resided there. Besides Emerson, the writer Hawthorne was perhaps the best known. She also mentioned a radical named Thoreau, a sort of woodland anchorite of whom Cooper had never heard.
They talked of many things: Boston fish chowder and the Transcendental movement. The ubiquitous feminine parasol—Judith had hers, small and fringed—and New England poets. Longfellow. Whittier, the laureate of the abolitionist movement. Young Lowell, just beginning to achieve national prominence.
“I know Lowell’s work,” Cooper said. “During the Mexican War I read his doggerel purporting to expose the motive for the campaign in ‘Californy.’” He quoted: “‘Chaps that make black slaves o’ niggers want to make white slaves o’ you.’”
For the first time, Judith’s glance was disapproving. “You mean to say you don’t believe the acquisition of slave territory was the reason for the war?”
“It was one reason, but not the only one. Things are seldom that clear-cut. This country’s drifting into serious trouble because of the clamor for simple and immediate solutions to complex problems that will take years to solve—even with total effort on both sides. Gradual, compensated emancipation could free the Negro without wrecking the South’s economy. Neither side will hear of it. It’s too slow. Too tainted with compromise. Everyone wants quick, pure, destructive answers.”
“It’s rather hard for me to tell which side you’re on.”
“There’s no handy label for me, I’m afraid. I’m opposed to the slave system, but I’ll never condone violence to achieve its overthrow. I believe that trying to preserve the institution by setting up an independent South is ludicrous. We must get along with the Yankees. We don’t dare risk a serious quarrel with them—they outnumber us, and we depend on their factories for survival. If we went our own way, that would be the end.”
“From what I read, many Southern politicians think otherwise.”
“They don’t remember the lessons of their Bible,” he replied with a faint, bitter smile. “‘The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee.’ Jeremiah forty-nine.”
“Well, I’m not such a—a gradualist as you,” she said after a moment’s consideration. “Slavery’s an evil that must be rooted out by whatever means are necessary. Reverend Channing tries to appeal to the Christianity of the slave owners, but so far that hasn’t worked.”
“Nor will it. Down here, money speaks a lot louder than God.”
“Doesn’t it everywhere? Still, how can we claim to practice liberty in this country if part of the population is in bondage?”
“My father says slavery is a positive good.”
“Nothing personal against your father—but despots always proclaim their own benevolence.”
He smiled. “I see you’ve read your Reverend Weld.”
“And Garrison, and Douglas. I believe what they all say. The price for emancipation must be paid, no matter how high.”
“I can’t agree. But perhaps there’ll come a time when I do. I find myself more and more out of step with the majority. One of these days I’ll probably be run out of Charleston. Before that happens, I’d like to show you my house.”
“What? Without a chaperone?” she teased. Her eyes met his. “I’d very much like to see your house, Cooper.”
Emboldened by her earnest gaze, he kissed her at the door of her stateroom a few minutes later. She responded with ardor, immediately apologized for her lack of shame, then in a whisper asked him to kiss her again.
It was a magic journey, and by the end they were in love and freely admitting it. As the steamer approached Charleston harbor, they finished a discussion of how soon she might be able to relinquish her duties in Concord, and whether she could be happy back in South Carolina.
The harbor pilot came aboard just at sunset. Cooper and Judith stood at the rail, watching the spires of the city flame in the last light. Never had he met anyone he trusted so completely. So
meone to whom he could speak without fear of misunderstanding or scorn.
“My people have always been landsmen, but I’ve fallen in love with the sea. Maybe because the land is inseparably tied to slavery and its miseries.” He faced toward the stern and the Atlantic beyond. “To me that ocean represents a real chance to be free of the old ways. It represents the speed of steam-driven ships. A shrinking world. The future—”
He hesitated, pink for a moment. “Do you find that laughable?”
She shook her head. “Admirable. Realistic, too. But outmoded ideas die hard. That’s why we’re experiencing such turmoil these days. An outmoded idea’s dying, but the people of this state won’t accept the fact or the inevitability of it. If they did, it would be so much easier.”
Cooper sighed. “Yes, but the resistance is understandable. A man gives up a lot when he gives up his nigras. He surrenders something I’ve never heard a single slave owner mention, yet it’s there, it’s fundamental, and it’s the one factor that causes and promotes the evil in the system.” The harbor wind tossed his hair as he gazed seaward. “Total power. Slavery gives one man total power over another. No human being should have that kind of power. No king, no president—and certainly not my father. The power’s destructive. I finally saw that clearly. My father was always a good and humane master, but one day he got angry and ordered one of our slaves cat-hauled. Do you know what that is?”
She shivered. “Yes. I’ve read of it.”
“Well, my father had it done. And because he owned the man—owned him without question—there was nothing to prevent it. Nothing to prevent one human being from behaving like a beast and another from being treated like one. That’s why I doubt Reverend Channing’s approach will succeed. Total power has a dark appeal to the wicked side in all of us.”
Seeing his stark expression, Judith grew bold enough to do something she’d only imagined herself doing heretofore—taking a man’s hand in hers, in public.
Gently she closed her fingers on his. She was delighted by the audacious things she’d done on this voyage. When she began the trip in Boston, she’d had no thought of doing any of them. Surely this delicious new freedom was another sign that she had finally found a man she could love all her life.