by John Jakes
She made the statement in such a reasonable way that the elderly priest was speechless.
George wasn’t. Livid but controlled, he said, “You’d better go upstairs and get out of those wet clothes.”
She stared at him for a moment. “Of course. Good evening, Father.”
After the priest left, George paced up and down, fuming. “I don’t know why we tolerate Virgilia. Sometimes I think we’re fools.”
Constance shook her head. “You don’t want to treat her the way Stanley does. She’s still your sister.”
He stared down at the little puddle of melted snow left by Virgilia’s shoes. “I find it increasingly hard to remember that.”
“But we must,” she said.
Later that night, George woke in bed to find Constance stirring in the dark.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick again?”
The explanation came to mind because she had been weak for a month or so. She had lost a child spontaneously about sixty days after realizing she was once more pregnant. It was the third time it had happened in as many years, and each loss seemed to produce physical aftereffects that lasted longer than previous ones: dizziness, sweats, and nausea in the night. George was worried not only about his wife’s health but about her state of mind, since the doctor hinted that she might never carry another child to full term.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I must get dressed and leave for an hour. There’s another shipment due.”
“That’s right. I forgot.”
“You go back to sleep.”
He was already putting his feet on the chilly floor. “I’ll do no such thing. The weather’s miserable. You can’t walk all the way to the shed. Let me put on some clothes, and I’ll bring the buggy to the front door.”
They sparred another minute or so, she telling him he needn’t go out into the cold with her and he insisting. Both knew he would have his way. The truth was, Constance was happy he wanted to accompany her. She felt weak and on the verge of a severe chill. She hated the thought of venturing into the winter night alone, though she would have done it.
George was glad to go for another reason, too. He could see and perhaps speak with the new arrival. More than all the orators, editorialists, and divines put together, the passengers traveling the underground railroad helped to shape his thinking about the issue dividing the country. He snapped his galluses over his shoulders and patted her arm.
“I’m going. No more argument.”
Twenty minutes later, he drove the creaking buggy up to the shed at the rear of the mill property. A lantern glimmered inside. He helped Constance climb down with the valise she had brought from the house. Impulsively, she kissed him. Her lips and his cheek were icy, stiff as parchment. Yet the kiss was warming.
She hurried to the door and gave the signal: two knocks, a pause, then two more. George crunched through the brilliantly lit snow and felt it spill over the tops of his shoes and soak his stockings. The storm had passed. The moon hung in the clear sky like a fine china plate.
Belzer, the merchant, opened the door cautiously. He started when he saw a second figure.
“It’s only me,” George said.
“Oh, yes. Come in, come in.”
The passenger was seated at a table with a square of jerky beef in his hands. He was a muscular, reddish-brown man whose cheekbones suggested some Indian blood. He was about thirty-five but all his curly hair was white. George could imagine why.
“This is Kee,” Belzer said, as proud as if he were introducing a member of his own family. “He comes to us all the way from Alabama. His name is short for Cherokee. His maternal grandmother belonged to the tribe.”
“Well, Kee, I’m glad you’re here,” Constance said. She set the valise beside the table. “There are boots in here and two extra shirts. Do you have a winter coat?”
“Yes’m.” The runaway had a resonant bass voice. He seemed nervous in their presence.
“They gave him one at the station near Wheeling,” Belzer said.
“Good,” Constance said. “Most times Canada is even colder than Pennsylvania. But once you’re there, you’ll have no more worries about slave catchers.”
“I want to work,” Kee told them. “I be good cook.”
“I gather that’s what he did most of his life,” Belzer said.
George was only partly aware of the conversation, so fascinated was he with the former slave’s posture and mannerisms. Kee’s head seemed to sit low between his shoulders, as if held in a perpetual cringe. Even here, in free territory, his dark eyes showed fear and distrust. He kept darting glances at the door, as if he expected someone to crash through at any moment.
“—worked for a particularly strict, vicious master,” Belzer was saying. “Kee, show them what you showed me, will you please?”
The runaway laid the untasted jerky aside. He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, and slipped it to his waist. Constance choked softly and gripped her husband’s arm. George was equally sickened by the sight of so much scar tissue. It ran from Kee’s shoulder blades to the small of his back; some of it looked as if a nest of snakes had petrified just beneath the skin.
Belzer’s mild eyes showed fury. “Some of it was done with a whip, some with heated irons. When did it happen the first time, Kee?”
“When I be nine. I took berries from master’s garden.” He cupped his fingers to illustrate a small handful. “This many berries.”
George shook his head. He knew why his own beliefs had become rock-hard in recent months.
Later, back in bed in Belvedere, George held Constance in his arms to warm them both. “Every time I encounter a man like Kee, I wonder why we’ve tolerated slavery this long.”
He couldn’t see the admiration in her eyes as she replied, “George, do you realize how much you’ve changed? You wouldn’t have said such a thing when I first met you.”
“Maybe not. But I know how I feel now. We’ve got to put a stop to slavery. Preferably with the consent and cooperation of the people who perpetuate the system. But if they refuse to listen to reason, then without it.”
“What if it came to a choice between abolition and your friendship with Orry? He is one of those perpetuating the system, after all.”
“I know. I hope it never comes to a choice like that.”
“But if it did, what would happen? I’m not trying to press you, but I’ve been anxious to know for a long time. I understand how much you like and respect Orry—”
Despite the pain of it, his conscience would permit but one answer. “I’d sacrifice friendship before I sacrificed what I believe.”
She hugged him. Clinging to him, she soon fell asleep.
He lay awake a good while longer, seeing snaky scar tissue and dark eyes constantly darting toward a doorway. And after he drifted off, he dreamed of a black man screaming while someone seared him with an iron.
If members of the Southern planter class represented one extreme that George disliked, his own sister represented another. During her two-day visit at Belvedere they argued about popular sovereignty, the fugitive laws, indeed almost every facet of the slavery issue. Virgilia’s position on all of them left no room for compromise.
“I would solve the whole problem with a single stroke,” she said as she sat at the supper table with George and Constance. Fearing the conversation would drift into acrimony—it usually did—Constance had already sent the children off to play. “One day’s work in the South, and it would all be over. That’s my dream, anyway,” Virgilia added with a smile that made George shiver.
She pressed her fork into her third wedge of pound cake, took a bite, then poured on more hot rum sauce from the silver server. She looked at her brother calmly. “You can shudder and grimace all you want, George. You can prate about scruples and mercy until you turn blue, but the day’s coming.”
“Virgilia, that’s rot. A slave revolution can’t possibly succeed.”
“Of course it can—properly financed and organi
zed. One glorious night of fire and justice. Iniquity washed away in a great river of blood.”
He was so appalled he almost dropped his demitasse. He and Constance stared at each other, then at their visitor. She was gazing at the ceiling—or at some apocalyptic scene beyond.
George wanted to shout at her. Instead he tried to make light of her remarks.
“You should try writing stage melodramas.”
She looked at him suddenly. “Joke all you want. It’s coming.”
Unintimidated by the chilling stare, Constance said, “You realize, of course, that it is fear of revolution by the black majority that prevents many Southerners from even discussing gradual, compensated emancipation?”
“Compensated emancipation is a pernicious idea. As Mr. Garrison says, it’s the same as paying a thief to surrender stolen property.”
“Nevertheless, what Southerners see in the wake of emancipation are freed slaves coming after them with rocks and pitchforks. Your inflammatory speculations don’t help the situation.”
Virgilia shoved her dessert plate away. “It’s more than speculation, I promise you.”
“So you’ve said. Repeatedly,” George said in a brusque way. “While we’re on the subject, let me be blunt about something. You ought to sever your connection with Captain Weston.”
Her eyes flew wide. For once her voice was faint. “What do you know about Captain Weston?”
“I know he exists. I know Weston is merely a nom de guerre, and that he’s as much of an extremist as the worst Southern hotspur.”
She managed scorn. “Have you hired spies to watch me?”
“Don’t be an idiot. I have business contacts all over the state, and I know many of the legislators in Harrisburg. All of them hear things. One thing they hear is that Captain Weston is actively fomenting black revolt down South. He’s stirring up tremendous animosity, even among people who would otherwise oppose slavery. You’d better stay away from him, or you’ll suffer the consequences.”
“If there are consequences, as you call them, I shall be proud to bear them.”
His mind floundered. What was he to do with her? He tried another tack. “I wouldn’t be so quick to say that. There are also plenty of men in Pennsylvania who hate abolitionists. Violent men.”
“Is that what success and money do to you, George? Rob you of principle and replace it with cowardice?” Like an affronted queen, she rose and left the room.
Constance pressed her palms against her eyes. “I can’t stand her any longer. What an obsessed, wretched creature she is!”
He reached out to take her hand and calm her, but his gaze remained fixed on the door through which Virgilia had vanished.
“It goes beyond obsession,” he said softly. “Sometimes I don’t think she’s sane.”
Eyes open and bulging, discolored tongue jutting between clenched teeth, the man hung from a rafter. From the angle of his head, it was clear the noose had snapped his neck.
Below the slowly turning, rigor-stiffened form, half a dozen men spoke in low voices. Two held smoking torches. Behind them stood long crates bearing painted inscriptions: GEOR. AL. MISS. One of the crates had been torn open with a crowbar. It contained new carbines.
Mortally terrified, Grady saw all this through a crack in the barn door. He had been sent from Philadelphia to the outskirts of Lancaster with a coded dispatch, two pages long. The man to whom he was to deliver the dispatch was hanging in the barn. Thank the Lord he had heard the voices as he crept through the feedlot and stopped in time.
He started to sneak away again. A sow suckling piglets honked loudly as he passed her pen. The noise brought an armed man to the barn door.
“Stop, you!”
Grady broke into a run. A shot whined over his head.
“Catch that nigger. He saw us.”
Grady ran as he had never run in all his life. Now and then he risked a look back. The men were pursuing on horseback. Behind them, the bright red barn was bathed in the sullen light of a December sundown. All at once flames licked from the hayloft, then began to swallow the huge, gaudy hex sign painted on the building. They had fired the place.
Their shots fell short but drove him on. He scrambled wildly over a stone stile, lost his balance, and smashed his mouth hard as he fell. Blood dripped, but he paid little attention, panting as he plunged into thick woods. He finally eluded the horsemen by lying in cold water under a creek bank for half an hour. Only then did he realize the price he had paid for his life. As he touched his upper lip, tears brimmed in his eyes.
Next morning he staggered into the hovel in Philadelphia. There he permitted himself to break down at last. His thoughts tumbled out.
“Captain Weston’s dead. I saw him hanging. They burned him, too, right along with his barn. They almost got me. I ran and fell. The wires came loose. I lost my teeth. Goddamn it, I lost my teeth.” Tears rolled down his cheeks as he slumped in Virgilia’s arms.
“Now, now.” She held him, stroking his head. “Don’t cry. Captain Weston wasn’t much of a leader. He talked too much. Too many people knew about him. Someday another man will come along, a better one. Then the revolution will succeed.”
“Yes, but—I lost my new teeth, goddamn it.”
She cradled his head on her breasts and didn’t answer. She was gazing past him, smiling faintly as she imagined white blood flowing.
38
ASHTON TURNED THE KEY, then tested the door to be certain it was locked. She rushed across her bedroom, pulled the shutters in, and latched them. She tried to counsel herself against panic, but with little success.
She took off her clothes, layer after layer, flinging the garments every which way. Naked, she stepped in front of the pier glass and scrutinized her reflection.
Could anyone tell? No, not yet. Her stomach remained smooth and flat. But it wouldn’t stay that way long. About ninety days had passed since the trip to West Point. Her recklessness had caught up with her.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse time. About a month ago, sick of Huntoon’s constant importuning, she had given in and agreed to marry him in the spring. At that time she had already missed one flow. She told herself it was because of some slight female problem that would clear up, and not the consequence of the enjoyable night in the powder laboratory.
But the problem didn’t clear up. And Huntoon spoke with Orry; a date in March was chosen. Now she was trapped.
“Godamighty, what am I going to do?” she asked the dark-haired girl staring at her from the glass.
Orry. She’d go to Orry. He’d be kind and understanding. She managed to convince herself of that for all of five minutes, while she dressed and touched up her hair with comb and pins. Then she realized she was a ninny. When she thought about it seriously, she knew her brother would never agree to do what she wanted.
Brett, then? She ruled that out instantly. She was damned if she’d give her sister the satisfaction of knowing she was in a fix. Besides, Brett was much too cozy with Orry these days. Chasing him everywhere, conferring with him over this and that, as if she were the mistress of Mont Royal—presumptuous little bitch. If Ashton confessed to her, Brett would run straight to their brother and snitch.
A dreadful pinpoint headache began in the center of her forehead. She unlocked the bedroom door and walked slowly down the hall. At the bottom of the staircase she thought she felt a quiver in her middle. Frantically, she pressed her fingers against her skirt, searching for signs of growth.
She felt nothing. Must be gas. Lately every part of her had been upset.
Brett appeared from the back of the house, a letter in her hand. “Billy’s studying chemistry. He says Professor Bailey is just wonderful. He shows them how chemistry applies to all sorts of things, like the manufacture of guncotton, and the heliograph—”
“Think I give a hang about Billy’s affairs?” Ashton cried, dashing past her.
“Ashton, what in the world is the matter with you late—?”
&nb
sp; The slammed front door chopped off the rest.
Terrified and half blinded by the low-slanting December sunlight, Ashton went running down to the Ashley. She nearly pitched off the end of the pier before she realized where she was. For a while she gazed at the light-flecked river and toyed with the idea of suicide.
But a gritty inner streak rebelled. James Huntoon might be a soft, silly slug, but he traveled in important political circles, and he was becoming more influential all the time. She didn’t intend to throw away her marriage, or the opportunity it presented, by drowning herself like some simpering heroine in a Simms novel.
What to do, then? Where to turn? By behaving as she had, she had courted this kind of trouble, and although she had known she might be tripped up, she had never prepared for it in any practical way. Well, there was no help to be found at Mont Royal. All the nigger women hated and distrusted her. It was mutual. Nor did she consider her poor mother as a possible source of assistance. All Clarissa did was drift through the house with a fey smile, or sit for hours rubbing out lines she had inscribed the day before on the family tree.
“Damn,” Ashton said to a great blue jay grouching at her from a wild palm. “There isn’t a single person in the whole state of South Carolina who’s smart enough or trustworthy enough to—”
Abruptly, a face floated into her thoughts. She could help, if anyone could. At least she might know to whom Ashton could turn. Everyone said her niggers just worshiped her. Moreover, they trusted her implicitly.
But how would she feel about the solution Ashton was determined to achieve? Some women thought that sort of thing a sin.
Only way to find out is to ask, she said to herself. What choice did she have unless she was willing to suffer utter ruin? Which she most definitely was not.
Surprisingly, the more she thought about her inspiration, the better she felt. She slept soundly and looked clear-eyed and rested when she came downstairs next morning, fancily dressed and carrying her gloves and parasol.