ReUNION: What if the Civil War had never happened?

by Harvey Ardman

  It was time to change the subject, Delphine decided. She walked over to the window. "Lot of cars out there," she said, pointing—and changing the subject.

  Cecily joined her and together they watched the cars pull up to the main entrance—big Hudsons made in Birmingham, NAU-built Cadillacs and Duesenbergs, and, from Europe, Rolls Royces, Daimlers, Mercedes Benzs and three stately Hohenbergs. Few of them were new, but most of them had been beautifully maintained.

  One after another, the automobiles stopped at the main entrance, where they disgorged some of the most notable families of the South—the Merriweathers, the Aikens, the Langhorns, the Buford, the Carswells, the Harringtons and so many others.

  Mostly, they came in fours—the great aristocrats, patriarch and matriarch, cultured, if elderly, their youngest daughters, some quite beautiful, some not so much, and their youngest sons, most of them mixed blessings, ready as they'd ever be to be presented to polite society.

  It was a generational moment. For most of these plantation families, the children were the last of the brood, the older offspring having already made their debuts, found their matches and drifted away to live their own lives and raise their own broods.

  "I haven't seen the Covingtons yet," Delphine said.

  "They sent their regrets," Cecily told her.

  "So Cady is missing her own coming-out party?"

  "Not just Cady," Cecily said. "Darcy Buchanan won't be coming either. Neither will Isabel Hicks."

  "Darcy Buchanan won't be here?" Delphine asked. "Well, I just guess I'll have to grit my teeth and make the best of it."

  Cecily laughed.

  "Is that Felicity Dudley?" Delphine pointed, looking surprised.

  "The very same."

  "Those can't be real."

  Cecily laughed again. "Last year, she was flat as a pancake."

  Delphine pointed again. "Caroline Clairborne, right?"

  "Yep. All grown up. And blonde."

  Delphine continued to watch the arriving parade. Some guests came in fancy dress, but the majority were casually attired and their drivers were carrying plastic clothing bags and cosmetics cases. She knew they'd be guided to one of the mansion's many bedrooms, where they would primp, blow dry, dress and at last emerge, as butterflies from cocoons, ready to take flight in High Society.

  As dinnertime approached, Delphine helped Cecily wriggle into a gorgeous lacey white Versace gown, then she excused herself, changed into her own more modest gown, went downstairs and positioned herself near the foot of the grand staircase, where she would have a clear view of the great procession.

  At about 6:30, the orchestra struck up "Dixie" and it began, girls approaching the top of the staircase from the right, led by Cecily Randolph, while boys in tuxedoes came from the left. They met at the top, awkwardly linked hands and descended together, nearly in slow motion. The parents lined the outside of the staircase, the better to see their offspring.

  It was a bit like a fashion show, with the staircase standing in for a runway. The girls, most of them free-range, dazzling in their Dolces and their Gabbanas, in their Mizrahis and their Kors, all in extra-virginal white. They came floating down the stairway like so many chrysanthemums drifting downstream.

  The girls hung on for dear life to the boys in tuxes—and boys they were, mostly members of the Clearasil generation. All told, Delphine mentally calculated, they were smeared with enough of the stuff to caulk a small sailboat. Evidently, there'd been a shortfall of male heirs among CSA aristocrats in recent years.

  At the bottom of the stairway, underneath a crystal chandelier the size of the Dillard's first floor Christmas tree, stood Edmund Randolph, handsome, tall, distinguished—exactly what Central Casting would have come up with if asked to produce the prototypical Confederate-variety "lord of the manor." He had assumed a patriarchal smile.

  As each girl stepped down to the main floor, her escort peeled off. Then the girl faced Mr. Randolph and performed the traditional St. James bow, also known as a common curtsy. He took her hand in his, spoke a few words of praise, about her beauty, her lineage or her accomplishments, whichever he could mention most credibly, and introduced her to the assembled aristocrats, who applauded obediently.

  Watching this, Delphine couldn't help but think of her cotillion and all the others she'd attended…fond memories of good times and loving families. She remembered her mother's tears as she came gliding down Acadia's marble staircase. She remembered her father's proud smile. It wasn't that long ago—only five years.

  But something was different this time, and not just the cast of characters. She watched the girls being introduced, trying to figure out what it was. After awhile, it became clear. The easy self-confidence she recalled from previous balls had faded away. So had the untroubled delight. They'd been replaced by uncertain smiles and grim determination.

  She was not, she realized, witnessing a cotillion. She was witnessing the re-enactment of a cotillion. She was watching a group of people going through the motions, replaying from memory their roles in an event that, in years past, had been a genuine coming of age celebration, put on by the wealthiest and most prestigious families in the country. Now it was an archeological artifact, a cotillion that had been taken out of the freezer, defrosted and set out on the table as if were freshly picked,

  When the last of the girls had been introduced, everyone headed into the dining room. They all took their seats, Delphine at the front table with the Randolph family. Edmund rose, spoke a few gracious words of welcome, and the servants appeared with platters overflowing with quail and pheasant, while others brought endless bottles of fine champagne.

  They feasted—and conversed—for the better part of two hours. Then the orchestra started up, and the younger and more energetic guests, including all of the girls and most of their escorts, adjourned to the ballroom, where they did their damndest to work off what they'd just eaten and to engage in merriment and mirth.

  All the while, Delphine asked herself just how she could question these people about the Bourque-Callaway meeting—whether they objected to it or were for it, and how strongly they felt. On two occasions, she thought she was leading the conversation in the right direction, only to be interrupted by one of the young men in tuxedoes, asking for a dance. She couldn’t refuse.

  Back at the Randolph table, Delphine again attempted to steer the conversation toward her father’s trip north, but a steady stream of visitors made that impossible. After she sang, she thought—that might be the time, when the party began to break up, when people were still a bit drunk and talkative.

  "When would you like me to sing?" Delphine asked her host.

  "I'm thinking they'll be running out of gas around 12:30 or so," Mr. Randolph told her. "I'll have the orchestra introduce you. How many songs will you do?"

  "How about a 40-minute set—six or seven songs."

  Randolph smiled, and it was one of his old, self-confident smiles. "I'm looking forward to it, Delphine. I've always thought yours was the most beautiful voice in the Confederacy."

  She bestowed one of her very best smiles on him. It wasn't an unusual compliment, but this time it came from a man she liked and respected.

  "When you're finished, Delphine," he said, "I'd like to have a talk with you."

  "Oh, about what?"

  "About your father, actually."

  That stopped her. "What do…"

  "Edmund, we really should be in there." This came from Edmund's wife, the formidable Whitney Randolph, uncrowned queen of plantation society, a slim auburn-haired woman with an elegant bearing, an elegant purple silk gown, an elegant necklace of three rows of perfectly matched pearls and a disdainful expression on her thin lips.

  Edmund offered Delphine a helpless shrug. "Of course," he told his wife. "I've been neglecting my duties." Then, to Delphine, "We'll talk after your performance. Would that be acceptable?"

  "Of course," she said. She was intrigued and a little concerned. This hadn't sounded like a ca
sual request. Randolph had something important to talk about, very likely something Roy would want to know about. And thus, she thought, I begin my career as an undercover agent.

  Both the debutants and their escorts had more endurance than Randolph had anticipated. But, by 12:45, everyone was wearing down. Only rarely now did the ardent young men need to be restrained by their elders during the slow dances. The orchestra was beginning to sound frayed and just a hair out of tune. Finally, at the end of a particularly upbeat number, Delphine's old friend, Vincent Langhorne, the conductor, a man famous not only in the Confederacy but in the NAU and Europe, turned toward the crowd and stepped forward on the ballroom's stage.

  "Ladies and gentlemen, thank you, thank you," he said, to polite applause. "It is now my pleasure to introduce for your entertainment and delight, the Songbird of the South, the finest—and let me say, prettiest—singer of our time, the daughter of our beloved leader President Buddy Bourque and a plantation girl herself, the one and only Delphine Bourque."

  Delphine, having retrieved her guitar from the main hall closet, confidently stepped onto the stage and reached for the microphone. Though she'd been singing in public for years, she still suffered from occasional stage fright. But not tonight. Tonight, she had something else on her mind besides singing. She had a job to do.

  The audience greeted her appearance with cheers and applause, which she received with a humble smile. Finally, they began to simmer down. "Good evening, everyone. Tonight, I've decided to sing four different kinds of songs—some of them old, some of them new, some of them borrowed, some of the blue. And if any of you young men and young ladies happen to get any ideas from that—well, please don't blame me."

  As was her custom, Delphine scanned the audience for familiar faces among the sea of white gowns and tuxes—and she found them, quite a few of them, beginning with Cecily Randolph, who was grinning at her like a kewpie doll. How young she seemed, how long ago it seemed that they had played together.

  Delphine sat down, touched her fingers to the guitar strings and heard her voice rise in song, listening and watching herself as though from a distance. She started with some old favorites, Deana Carter's Strawberry Wine and Patsy Cline's I Fall to Pieces, both of which pleased and comforted older members of the plantation aristocracy. At that thought, she sought—and found—Edmund Raymond, standing toward the back of the crowd with a distant look in his eye, and, as she listened to her own voice, singing on automatic pilot, she wondered again about the talk he'd suggested.

  Then she stepped back into herself and segued to some newer numbers, Des'ree's Kissing You, which got a big hand from the young people. following it with Mine, the Taylor Swift hit. She lost the pitch for a couple of notes, but quickly recovered. The applause was gratifying.

  At that moment, almost as if Delphine had prompted him, some young man in the audience shouted out, "How about some of your new songs," which triggered more applause among the young people, and a few shouts of "yeah, yeah."

  Delphine obliged them with two from her latest album, Someone to Take Me Away and Just Another Day in Heaven. After the applause, she stood and made as if to leave the stage, a bit of pretense that fooled nobody. The applause continued and she sat again, and sang the encore they were all waiting for, her newest hit, Waiting For You to Come Home.

  The moment Delphine left the stage, she found Edmund Randolph at her shoulder. "That was wonderful," he said. "As always."

  "Thank you."

  "Now I wonder if I could impose on you. Could we go someplace private to talk?" he asked.

  The request had come more quickly than she'd expected. "Of course."

  He led her to an unobtrusive side door, then down a flight of wooden steps, to what Delphine knew from her days playing with Cecily was one of Westover's famous tunnels, carved into the underlying stone more than a hundred and fifty years ago when it looked as though war might break out between North and South.

  The tunnel was narrow—no car could have passed through it—and the walls were rough and damp, but thick wooden planks had been laid on the floor and a string of lights illuminated their path. If Delphine's guess was right, this was the passage that led to the chamber under the ice house, perhaps 100 yards from the main house.

  "We're headed toward the ice house?" Delphine asked, wondering what this was all about.

  "Yes. Well, to the meeting room below it. Some old friends would like to have a word with you."

  "Old friends?" she asked, sounding a bit uncertain.

  "Nothing to worry about, I assure you." Edmund said.

  "Of course not."

  Randolph walked beside her, silent for a moment. "I hope you've enjoyed yourself at the cotillion," he said, finally.

  "Brought back a lot of memories."

  "Keep hold of those memories, Delphine," Edmund said. "You won't be adding to them. None of us will."

  "What do you mean?"

  "That was the last of them."

  "I don’t understand.”

  Randolph stopped and looked back at Delphine and took her hands in his. "This was the last of the cotillions, Delphine. We can't afford them anymore. We had to borrow to put this one on."

  "But the other plantation families…"

  "We couldn't have put on this one without their contributions. Now they're broke too."

  "Edmund, if my fee…"

  "Please, Delphine. Don't embarrass me."

  "Surely times will improve. They always do."

  "That's what we've said to ourselves—for years. But for some reason, it never happens."

  Now they began to hear voices, coming from up ahead. Men talking, arguing, debating.

  “I still think it makes no sense to ask the girl,” one man said. The voice was old and crotchety.

  “She’s supposed to be pretty sharp.” This came from yet another man, also old, at least by the sound of his voice.

  “For pity’s sake, Paxton, she’s a 22-year-old girl. She’s a piece of fluff.”

  “Randolph says she’s a lot more than that,” one of others said. “Besides, what choice do we have? This may be our very last chance.”

  "Creighton, you know as well as I that the die was cast when we lost Texas to Mexico. All that oil revenue, gone." The voice was cultured, but no longer young.

  "H-He's…right," someone else said, oddly pausing between the two words, as if talking were difficult for him. "When that happened, the Confed-Confederacy just wasn't a s-s-s-sustainable…business any more."

  "You're both wrong." The voice was high-pitched and sarcastic. “It started earlier than that. It started when those Missouri reprobates voted to join the NAU, then, by God, the damned Oklahomans did the same damn thing."

  "You may be old, Creighton, but you're not old enough to remember that. That was over a hundred years ago.. We had plenty of good years after that. Good decades." The remark was followed by an outburst of coughing.

  "Mebbe so, Paxton, but that was the beginning of the end," the high-pitched voice insisted.

  Now the tunnel widened and Delphine and Edmund Randolph entered a cozy room that had been carved out of the stone. It was occupied by six men, all of an age, sitting around a old wooden table on which sat several packs of playing cards, talking, debating with a surprising amount of energy. A cloud of cigarette smoke hovered over the table and the crystal ashtrays at either end were both nearly filled with cigarette butts.

  "T'weren't the beginning of anything," one of the men said. He was a skeletal figure with sideburns down to the jawline and eyes set so deeply they were hard to see. "It was the crop failures. The fourth one in a row was the final blow." He took a long drag on his cigarette.

  The youngest of the bunch shook his head in the negative. He was a 60-year-old gentlemen, with dyed black hair, dressed in an exquisite London-tailored suit only a decade or so out of fashion. "We were done in by a God-forsaken plague of locusts. We should have listened to the scientists,” he said. “They told us it was coming. We
should have developed the insecticides they recommended. But no, we got our pet scientists to say it wasn't true and we told the country we couldn't afford the insecticide. Or that it wouldn't work. We were so arrogant…" He stopped to light a cigarette.

  Edmund Randolph knocked on the doorframe, hoping to get the men's attention. But they didn't even notice him standing there, even with Delphine Bourque beside him.

  "Next thing you're going to tell me," said the man with the sideburns, "is that we should have freed the slaves long before we did."

  "Well, we should have," said the man in the London-tailored suit, taking another cigarette from a slim, silver case.

  A little grey gnome of a man who was sitting at the far end of the table had an objection. "That completely wiped out my capital," he complained.

  "You would have lost it anyway," said the man next to him, a fat, bald-headed fellow with a sparse white fringe circling around the back of his head. "We all did."

  The gnome spoke again, with obvious bitterness. "So now what, you're going to tell me we should let them vote?"

  They all laughed.

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen," Randolph called out. "I've brought a guest. Gentlemen?"

  They finally noticed Delphine, and stood up, like soldiers coming to attention. Several offered her their chairs, but Randolph cut that short, finding a folding chair leaning against a wall.

  "I thought you wanted to talk to me about my father," Delphine said to Randolph.

  "Well, actually, we all do," Randolph told her. He turned toward the men at the table. "Gentlemen, most of you already know her, but for those who haven't met her or seen her in some time, this lovely and talented redhead is Delphine Bourque, the daughter of our President and one of our most gifted singers. Please introduce yourselves."

  Delphine recognized most of them, of course. She'd known these faces since she was a child. They were the core of the Confederacy, immensely powerful, immensely wealthy, immensely admired, at least in their younger days.

  The fat, bald-headed man put down his cigarette and held out a hand. "Creighton Sinclair, Ms. Bourque. We met at Arcadia when you were knee high to a grasshopper."