by John Dunning
The hand of Providence guided me to him, then him to me. Call me a self-serving sentimentalist, call me a fool, but that’s what I believe.
We stayed in Charleston a week. On the third day Richard disappeared and was gone almost thirty-six hours.
He had complained of a headache after a night of too much alcohol, and I had gone walking on the Battery alone. In fact I went far beyond the Battery, around the entire city and out on a footpath that ran along the Ashley River. I spent hours walking, watching the people, talking to strangers, and soaking up the sun. I lost track of time with a gang of pickaninnies crabbing from the riverbank, fascinated by their strange language and delighted with their catch. The sun was low over the river when I finally turned back to the city: suddenly I realized I had been gone all day.
At the hotel there was a message in my box: Looked for you and waited as long as I could. Gone to meet some people. Hoped you would return to join us. Opportunity arose suddenly and might not come again. Will see you tomorrow. Richard.
This was disappointing but I had only myself to blame. Never mind: I would enjoy the evening without Richard’s company. The city was exotic; I would explore its tastes and sounds and sights on my own. I dressed for an occasion and was determined to find one. At the desk I asked the clerk what entertainments might be available and he suggested a musicale and a melodrama, both within walking distance. I could catch either of these and still have time for a good dinner before curtain. He gave me the names of several restaurants; then, as I was turning to leave, he said, “There was a message for you from Mr. Burton this morning. Did you get it?” I said I had and thanked him. “It’s too bad,” he said. “You just missed him.”
I was already out on the street when what he’d said brought me up short. I returned to the desk and asked him to elaborate. He said, “I only meant because he left immediately after you did,” and my heart sank.
I was crushed by this proof that Richard had lied. He hadn’t looked for me at all; he had watched for me to leave. If there was any truth in his note, it was only that he had gone to see some people. Yes, I thought bitterly. He’s seeing some people he doesn’t want me to meet or even know he’s met.
I had opted for the melodrama but now I was in too sour a mood to enjoy it. I wasn’t hungry either—normally I am a three-a-day man and I hadn’t eaten since morning, but at that point the prospect of a meal was, to say the least, unappetizing. I walked the streets and I could see only one possible course of action. I must cut the trip short. No more fencing: I would remove even the possibility of further lies by removing myself from Richard’s game, whatever it was. I would simply say that something about the Southern climate had begun to affect my health and I must catch the steamer north at my first opportunity—tomorrow if possible. I could lie if he could, I thought childishly. Richard, of course, would know the reason; he was far too intelligent to be fooled by such a lame excuse, but that was the best I could come up with. The alternative—to remain under pretense—would be intolerable.
I was bitterly disappointed, but once I had decided I felt surprisingly better. Not that I wanted to leave—far from it. I would have given much to have Richard appear that moment with a credible reason for his deception, but I couldn’t imagine what that would be. What I now wanted was to salvage whatever I could of my personal regard for Richard and take my leave while I could still give him some benefit of the doubt.
But out on the street a new thought hit me. I would have to warn someone. Someone had to be told that England was already making plans against us. Someone in our government, high enough to matter, must be told.
Not the treasonous Secretary Floyd, that much was certain.
In the morning I walked to the offices of the steamship company and obtained a schedule. I could get a boat for Wilmington within the hour. But Richard had still not returned; I couldn’t leave without at least saying good-bye, and so I lounged around the hotel waiting until long after the steamer had departed for Wilmington. I was quite hungry: I had not eaten since yesterday, and now I had a substantial lunch at the hotel, then waited over a glass of ale in the bar across the street. Well, I was stuck for another day. This fact brought an odd mix of clashing emotions—anger, dismay, anxiety, along with relief and a wild hope that at times overrode all the others. I was anxious to have it all behind me and be away from here but the thought of what must come filled me with despair. Above all I still wished desperately for some word or act that would save us from the ugly split that seemed inevitable.
I had another ale and sometime later, on my third, I felt my limit and switched to sarsaparilla. My anger had again dissipated, and again I sat groping for some innocent reason behind Richard’s actions. There was none: he had lied, there was no doubt about that, there could be no excuse for it, I had to go, I should have gone at once and left him a note. But that would be a coward’s way and we both deserved better. So I waited.
I saw him arrive at three o’clock. I crossed the street and came into the hotel behind him, but again I wavered. How could I do this? What could I say? I stood in the lobby and watched him skip jauntily up the stairs, and only when he had gone did I go up at a far slower gait. I walked softly past his room and went into my own. I lay on the bed in a state of deep trouble, and after a while I fell asleep.
I opened my eyes at his knock on my door. I didn’t move.
He rapped again. He said nothing but I knew who it was. I heard him walk away, down the hall, down the stairs. I couldn’t keep him waiting much longer.
At last I went down and saw him sitting alone at the far end of the lobby. He was reading a newspaper: the Charleston Mercury, Rhett’s rabble-rousing sheet of traitorous innuendo and sedition. He looked over the edge of the paper as I approached.
“Charlie. I’ve been looking for you.”
Immediately I started my lie. “I haven’t been feeling well,” I said, but my voice faltered and I knew I could not continue with it. How could I chastise Richard for lying if I was doing the same? Before I could go on, he said, “Sit down here, talk to me,” and I sat in the lounge chair facing his. He looked in my eyes. “I want to tell you something.”
I almost brushed him off in a wave of impatience. Please, I thought, no more lies. I felt my hands tremble as I prepared to speak. But he spoke first, offering a surprising confession. “I didn’t tell you the truth in that note I left you.”
I nodded.
“You guessed as much?”
Nodded again.
He regarded me for a long moment. “I don’t lie easily to any man. It’s almost impossible when that man is a close friend.”
Please, Richard, I thought, how close can we be? We barely know each other. I wanted to say it but didn’t.
“The fact is, I had to be away from you for a day. So I waited until you left the hotel. Then I left and called on some people.”
“Am I allowed to ask why?”
“Because you would not have approved of what I did. And it had become necessary for me to play a role.”
I looked up, met his eyes, and suddenly I found my voice, surprising myself at the strength of it. “You must know how this seems to me. You must know I can’t sit still for it. I think under the circumstances—”
“At least hear me out. Then do what you must.”
He spent no time gathering himself. He knew what he had to say, and at his first words I felt my anger melting away. Suspicion remained: it would take years for that bitter pill to completely dissolve. But what I thought I now heard in his voice was truth.
“I have been up to Mr. Rhett’s plantation. I went at the request of Lord Palmerston, who had paved my way in a secret communication.”
He looked at me directly. “There were many ultrasecessionists on hand, and a number of state officials, with lots of heated balderdash thrown about. Charlie, these fools are having the time of their lives. Strutting like cocks in a barnyard. So much self-aggrandizement, so much egotism, no regard at all for the trag
edy they are about to rain down on their country. They have no idea how quickly the world is turning against state-sponsored slavery, and how difficult it will soon be for them to function with that as their calling card. They can’t imagine how many of their boys will die for their foolish pride.”
He took a deep breath. “Your presence would have been impossible.”
Softly, I said, “What did they all think, having Richard Burton among them?”
“I didn’t go as Richard Burton. To them I was a friend of a friend of the prime minister whose name they will quickly forget.”
“Richard…”
“My only lie was the manner of my escape yesterday, and I intended to set that straight between us, whether you had guessed it or not.”
“There’s more to it than that. I asked you specifically whether you are on a spying mission.”
“And I told you I’m not.”
“I asked you specifically if you are under any instructions from Palmerston.”
“Lord Palmerston asked me to make this call only as a courtesy and I’ve done that. When I return to England he will want my impression of the overall situation here and I shall give it to him. That’s hardly what anyone would call grand intrigue.”
He gestured impatiently. “I can’t tell you what England will do when your war comes. I’m not the prime minister. All I can do is tell him what I think.”
“Which is?”
“That we would be ill-advised to get involved in this conflict in any way. That the American spirit will not be defeated. That even if the South should somehow prevail—it won’t—but even then there would be resistance groups at work to restore the Union, and that intervention or tampering by any foreign power, especially one based thousands of miles away, would be insane. That such a foreign power can expect fierce guerrilla warfare, perhaps for years, with many casualties. The day is coming when no power, not even England, will be able to sustain such a war. If Palmerston brings us into it, it will be a quagmire and history will remember his name for that above all else. That’s what I’ll tell him.”
He cleared his throat. “I apologize for the small deception.”
“Richard…”
I think he knew then what I had to ask but he waited politely.
“Why did you bring me into it?” I said. “Why involve me in something that could only turn out badly for both of us?”
He smiled dolefully. “Charlie, don’t you know that?”
I blinked at him and gestured impatiently. “Know what?”
“I came to America hoping for self-renewal. You gave it to me. You restored my spirit, almost completely, on the first day we met.”
I couldn’t imagine. I felt numb with surprise, and a flush of—oh God, was that love growing in my heart? I recoiled at once from such a thought.
“I was a wounded man when I left England. My spirits have never been lower, and by the end of that first day with you I felt like my old self again. You were a stranger, a strong and intelligent man far from my own land, who had collected and read my books, and even took time out from his day to come say hello.”
“But that seems…” I groped for the words. “God, that seems so…small.”
“Big gifts often seem small to those who dispense them.”
A minute passed. Then he said, “I shall never forget that week we spent together in your home. You have a rare ability to make a man feel like a hero without pandering to him.”
“How could I possibly have done all that?”
“Just being your own man. You had intelligent opinions and you stood up to me. That’s how I came to value your opinion. And your company.”
“Well, Richard,” I said, still numbly. “I’ve never been much for glaring hero worship. To me, of course, you were a hero, and still are. But there had to be something more than that to create a friendship. I had to bring something of my own to it.”
“Isn’t that what I’m saying? I meet enough kowtowing idiots to know the difference.”
He turned his palms up, the universal gesture for “That’s all there is,” and said, “So why did I bring you? You can be sure I never would have suggested it if I had been sent here on some spying mission. I brought you because I wanted you with me. And I thought I could slip away for a day without offending you.”
He got up and squeezed my shoulder. “Give it some thought, Charlie.”
* * *
That night we went out together as if nothing had happened. We visited bars along the market, from Meeting Street to the waterfront, and I drank more ale than I had consumed in any week of my life or have ever done since. Richard, far more practiced at imbibing, held his liquor well, but I became rather silly with the night still young. As midnight approached, Richard also began feeling the influence, and we sang bawdy seaman’s songs with other merrymakers we met along the way. We laughed at everything: every drunken slur and slip of the tongue brought a riot of laughter from the crowd around us, which, in some of the taverns, numbered almost as many women as men. Richard charmed them all and they seemed willing to give my obviously Northern voice the benefit of doubt. We staggered out of the last open bar at some ungodly morning hour and made a tortuous walk back to the hotel. As we parted that night, Richard said, “Tomorrow we can see some more sights, if you want. And sometime before we leave I’d like to go over to Fort Moultrie and visit the garrison there.”
I wondered through my alcoholic haze whether I’d be welcome on such a trip, but Richard said, “Wouldn’t you like to see that, Charlie—see how it looks from the perspective of those poor devils who will have to die defending it?”
I said I would, and we left it at that.
The commanding officer at Fort Moultrie was Colonel John Gardner. I knew little about him before that day: Richard, in fact, knew much more. “He’s an old man,” he said as our steamer curled in toward the landing at the western tip of Mount Pleasant. “He served in the War of 1812 and in Mexico.”
The former would make him at least sixty, not too ancient for command, but Richard said nothing when I voiced this. We docked and began the cumbersome voyage to Sullivan’s Island. In the sum-mer it would be easier: there’d be a direct ferry crossing from the city, used by wealthy families with island homes to escape Charleston’s worst yellow fever months. But now in late spring it was a more tedious journey, across the marsh on a plank road and from there by small hired boats to the tip of the island.
The beach was lovely in the warm spring air. I remembered reading of this island in Poe, who had been stationed here some thirty years before and had set the tale of his gold bug partly in these dunes. It had changed little in that time. The fort was at least as dilapidated and run-down today, and as we approached it I could see what an untenable mission the garrison had been given. Huge sand dunes had accumulated against the walls, making its defense impossible: I could have walked up and over the walls with no effort at all.
There were no guards out as we approached, and we went on past, turning inland to trek around to the front gate. There, Richard presented our cards and asked if we might pay our respects to Colonel Gardner. We were taken into the fort, where we met Captain Abner Doubleday, who spoke with us briefly.
“Colonel Gardner is quartered not far from here, outside the fort,” Doubleday said. “If you’ll kindly wait here, I’ll send someone to see if he can receive you.”
When we were alone again, Richard rolled his eyes in the universal gesture of disdain. “He lives outside his fort. What does that tell you?”
“Nothing good,” I said. “I wonder if he’s a rebel Yankee like our Mr. Floyd.”
“He’s from Massachusetts,” Richard said, surprising me again with his knowledge.
Doubleday returned fifteen minutes later and said Gardner would receive us after his lunch hour, which unfortunately was already under way. “You’re certainly welcome to share mess here,” he said, and we thanked him and accepted his offer.
Burton had made no attempt to
conceal his identity, but if his name meant anything to Doubleday, that wasn’t immediately apparent. Doubleday had just returned to the army after a long leave of absence and was in the earliest days at his new post. I wondered what he thought of this place in these times. He held his own curiosity with perfect military propriety, but when Burton asked who was running the day-to-day affairs of the fort, he said, with a touch of malicious irony, “The officer of the day. Today that seems to be myself.”
We ate the simple fare and talked about small things—the weather, the potential danger of Burton’s proposed trip across the continent, the Indians in the West, and the prospect of yellow fever in Charleston again this summer.