Susanna went to Deborah’s room and said, “My dear, I’ve done a dreadful thing ….” When she told her story, Deborah laughed out loud, delighted at the chance to see young Mr. Denton suffer. Susanna said, “I’ll come in and help you fix your hair. I want you to look like an angel tonight!”
David was not given to practical jokes, but he entered into this one. A few minutes before time for the carriage to leave, he went to the bedroom he shared with Dent. Putting a somber look on his face, he said, “Well, Dent, one good thing about this—you won’t have to do it but once. I mean, Christmas only comes but once a year. And she’ll be going back to Washington pretty soon, I suppose.”
Dent stared at him. “She’s pretty ugly, David?”
“Well, look at it like this, Dent,” David said with a pained expression, throwing himself into his role. “Beauty is only skin-deep.”
Dent swore, then gave the desk before him a sound kick. “Well, why don’t you go skin her, then?” He was deeply depressed and raved about what an awful woman his grandmother was to force him into such a thing. Finally he was ready—at least, he was dressed—but he stood there, his lip sticking out mulishly. “I don’t think I’m well, David. Just go tell Grandmother—”
“You know that won’t work,” David broke in, shaking his head. “Come on, Dent. Might as well get it over with. Tell you what, I’ll dance with her twice myself! Now there’s brotherly love for you—considering what she looks like!”
Dent followed David down the stairs and found the rest of the family waiting at the foot of the great staircase. “Well, why don’t you go on and laugh!” he exploded when Lowell tried to stifle a giggle behind his hand and Rena grinned at him broadly. “Fine family you are!” he burst out bitterly. “Spoiling my whole Christmas!”
“You’ve got to learn to take your medicine with less fuss, my boy,” his grandfather said. Thomas could scarcely keep his face straight, and when Dent looked down with a scowl, he winked at Clay. “I understand that the young lady makes up in scholarship what she lacks in personal attraction, Clay.”
“Why, that’s correct, Father,” Clay said blandly. “She’s quite a marvel in theology, I believe. Dent, ask her about her views on hyper-Calvinism and a second work of grace. I think you’ll benefit from her knowledge.”
Dent gave both of them an angry look, and then Lowell said, “There she comes!”
Dent was aware that the entire family was having a great time at his expense, and he hated it. Determined not to give them any satisfaction, he didn’t even look up, but stared out the window. “Dent, this is your cousin Deborah Steele. I know you’ll take good care of her at the ball tonight,” Susanna said.
Dent knew that he’d have to look at the girl. He couldn’t avoid that, of course! He lifted his eyes and, at the same time, started to mutter some fitting remark—but he could not get it out of his mouth.
The girl who stood before him was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life!
He felt as if he had been struck a blow in the pit of the stomach, and his brain seemed to go dead. His eyes were working, however, and he stared at her while waiting for his voice and mind to come back to life.
Deborah was wearing an evening gown of magenta silk, which was cut slightly lower than the going fashion. She had picked it out because she knew her father would never permit her to wear it, and even Susanna had been a little apprehensive. But the gown suited her somehow, bringing out her flawless complexion, and the tiara she wore was a dramatic touch that drew the eye at once. Her strange violet-colored eyes looked enormous, and her lips were full and rosy as she smiled at Dent.
“How do you do, Mr. Rocklin?” she asked demurely.
“Uh—fine!” Dent stammered. He was not usually shy, but the beauty of this girl affected him strangely.
“Your family has told me how much you’ve looked forward to taking me to the ball—”
Deborah never finished, because Thomas Rocklin let out a great whoop of laughter at the comical expression on Dent’s face, and then all of the family joined in. Only Ellen didn’t laugh, for she had not been in on the joke.
Dent stared around wildly, thinking his family had gone mad—and then it came to him. A rich crimson color came to his face, and then it ebbed, leaving him pale. He had the impulse to turn and leave the room, but somehow he could not do it. He saw that his grandmother was smiling at him, and managed to say reproachfully, “I didn’t think you could stoop so low, Grandmother!”
The look on his face sent them all off into fresh gales of laughter. Finally Deborah said, “I won’t hold you to such a bargain, Mr. Rocklin. Practical jokes are always a little unkind, aren’t they?”
Dent looked very uncomfortable and managed to say, “I think I understand that now for the first time. I’ll be very cautious about pulling one in the future.” Then he said, “But now that the joke is over, I’m delighted to meet you.”
Thomas found his grandson’s reformation amusing. “You young devil! Miss Deborah, I suggest that you cast this fellow aside. I’ll find you a suitable escort when we get to the ball.”
Deborah smiled, and Dent was intrigued at the two small dimples that appeared in her cheeks. “Thank you, Uncle Thomas. That’s very gracious of you.” She didn’t look at Dent as she added, “I suppose all Southern men can’t be gallant, can they?”
Dent straightened his back and determined to escort the girl if it snowed ink! “Miss Deborah, I confess that I’ve behaved very badly. But you’ll surely give me an opportunity to redeem myself? I ask it as a favor.”
You are a devil! Deborah thought. And good-looking as sin! Better-looking even than your father, and that’s saying a lot. I think you haven’t suffered enough yet—“Why, that’s very gallant, sir.” She smiled and took the arm Dent offered. “While we’re on the way to the ball, let me tell you about some of the latest doctrinal problems that have come up in these trying days ….”
Dent knew she was tormenting him, but he didn’t care in the least. He had completely forgotten that he was supposed to be contesting with Jackie Terrel for the favors of some girl—whatever her name was!
Deborah Steele was the belle of the ball. She was a Yankee and, some said, an abolitionist—but as one young man noted, “She can be a retarded Buddhist for all I care! With a face and figure like that, I’d just ‘bout be ready to join up with the Yankees if that’s what she wanted!”
Deborah had a wonderful time, enjoying the antics of the young men who vied over her dances. She tormented Dent fully, but she gave much of her time to Rena. She had helped the girl with a dress, and the two of them sat and giggled as often as Deborah could fight off her admirers.
She forced Clay to ask her to dance, then said, “It would be nice if you would ask Rena to dance, Mr. Rocklin.”
Clay smiled. “I don’t even know if she can dance.”
“Of course she can! All fourteen-year-old girls can dance. It’s born in them. And you two would look so nice!”
“I’ll do it!” Clay stared at her, then shook his head. “Miss Deborah Steele, you’re a caution!”
Deborah hesitated, then said daringly, “I can tell what you’re thinking. Did you know I can read minds?”
“What am I thinking?”
“You’re wishing that I were Melora Yancy!” Clay stiffened, and she saw that she had overstepped her bounds. At once her hand tightened on his arm, and she whispered, “I’m so sorry! I’m a witless fool!”
Clay blinked, amazed to see tears glisten in her eyes. She really was sorry, he saw. “I want to see Melora have something better,” he said finally. “One of the finest men I know wants to marry her. It would be good if she’d take him.”
He said no more, but the joy was gone out of his face, and Deborah was sorry she’d mentioned Melora. When the dance was over, she found Dent at her side, demanding a dance. But before it got well under way, he maneuvered her out of the ballroom into a hallway that led to a small sunroom with huge glass wi
ndows. It was empty, and he said at once, “I brought you out here to ask you to go to a ball with me.” He was wearing a gray suit, and his black hair and fine figure made him quite dashing. “Next week, at my aunt’s house. Will you go?”
“I don’t think so,” Deborah said. “We laughed at you for not wanting to take a homely girl to a ball. I suppose that’s common, so I don’t really blame you for that. But I still won’t go to the ball with you.”
Dent was stung. “Am I too Southern for you?”
“Probably. But that’s not it either.” She looked up at him coolly and said, “I like your father very much. I think he’s a fine man.”
Dent stared at her. “Well, what’s that got to do with going to a ball with me?”
Deborah said clearly, “I don’t like the way you treat him, Mr. Rocklin. He made a bad mistake, but you’re making a worse one. He abandoned his family, which is a terrible thing to do. But you’re standing in judgment on him, refusing to forgive. That, in my opinion, is a worse thing to do.”
Dent turned pale and said bitterly, “Easy for you to make judgments, isn’t it, Miss Steele? But aren’t you judging me, just as you said I’m judging my father?”
“Don’t you see the difference? I’m a stranger to you. A few more weeks and you won’t see me again. But Clay Rocklin is your father. You’ll never have another one. I think you’re headed for a terrible fall, Dent,” she said. “Anyone who won’t forgive is going to have problems.”
Dent was furious—and deep down, he was terribly ashamed. He had struggled with his bitterness, but it had been a silent struggle. Now this snip of a girl had laid it bare!
Her very beauty made it worse! He stood there, fists clenched, then suddenly reached out and pulled her close. Her eyes opened wide with shock, and then he was kissing her. It was an angry kiss on his part, something to hurt her. If she had been a man, he would have struck her with his fist. But since that was out of the question …
And yet, even as his lips bruised hers, he felt something sweet in her. Despite all her puffed-up knowledge and wrong ideas, he felt himself change, loosening his tight grip but keeping his lips on hers. Finally he thought he felt her respond, and when he pulled back, he said in an unsteady voice, “Deborah, you’re an awful person in lots of ways, but you’ve got something that gets to a man!”
Deborah Steele had been kissed before—but never had she felt such a powerful emotion. She stared at Denton, wanting to hurt him, and finally said, “Well, we’re kissing cousins, it seems! And I can tell you’ve had a great deal of practice.”
“Deborah—!”
“Never mind. Let’s go back to the ballroom.”
Both of them were shaken by the experience, and both were angry. Clay saw them return and said to his mother, “I think our Dent got his feathers singed!”
The ball went on.
Far away in Charleston, Gideon Rocklin was in a boat with a full load of soldiers. The water was cold, and the men were doused by the high waves that threatened to swamp the boats.
By dawn the next morning, Gideon said wearily, “All the men are disembarked, Major.”
Anderson looked at him, his own face gray with fatigue.
“Very well, sir. Now we’ll wait for them to come!”
CHAPTER 21
“I CAN BE ALONE!”
The year of 1861 did not come in gently for America. Ferment in the North and in the South stirred, and angry men on both sides pushed the two sections closer to the brink of war. President Buchanan, never a strong leader and now a lame duck, was so out of touch with things that it was Senator Jefferson Davis who had come to his office and broken the news to him that Major Anderson had spiked his guns at Fort Moultrie and moved his garrison to Fort Sumter. The senator had added, “And now, Mr. President, you are surrounded with blood and dishonor on all sides.”
But Buchanan seemed to be completely paralyzed and did nothing but wait for Lincoln to assume the burden. On January 5, General Scott sent the Star of the West, a merchant vessel, with two hundred troops to reinforce Major Anderson at Sumter. But the ship was driven off by cannon fire aimed by a South Carolina battery and had to make her way back home with the troops. All that had been accomplished was to pour oil on the fire. Robert Barnwell Rhett, the fire-eating editor of the Charleston Mercury, wrote that “powder has been burnt over the degrees of our state, and the firing on the Star of the West is the opening ball of the Revolution. South Carolina is honored to be the first thus to resist the Yankee tyranny. She has not hesitated to strike the first blow, full in the face of her insulter.”
Major Anderson had not even been informed that reinforcements were coming, and when he had joined his staff at the sound of cannon fire, none of them knew what was happening. When they learned that their reinforcements were not coming, Anderson said bleakly, “Major Rocklin, our enemies may not have to take our position by attack. If supplies don’t arrive soon, we’ll be starved out!”
“They’ll come, Major,” Gid said confidently.
But they did not come, and the weeks passed with an agonizing slowness for the little company on the island fortress. The Southern states began to coalesce, with Mississippi voting eighty-four to fifteen in favor of secession, and ten days later, on January 10, Florida joined Mississippi and South Carolina. A day later Alabama left the union. Finally in February, the secessionist delegates met in Montgomery, Alabama, to set up their Southern nation. Jefferson Davis was elected as the first president, and when the word of his election came to him, his face paled. He said then and repeated later that he had not wanted the office. Rather he had hoped for command of the Confederacy’s army.
So it went, ponderously at first, like a juggernaut. From time to time, Melanie would ride out to Sumter and spend time with Gideon. She gave him reports on the boys. She told him of Deborah’s visit at Gracefield, which had been extended.
“It can’t go on like this, Mellie,” Gid told her one cold February morning as she waited for the boat to take her back to her rooming house in Charleston. “It’s like a powder house, and sooner or later one spark is going to set the whole thing off!”
Back at Gracefield, Clay was running into problems, too. He had made many friends since coming back to his home, but now he was losing them fast. He tried to be moderate, but after one of his oldest friends left him angrily, Clay said to Jeremiah Irons, “It’s like the last judgment, Jeremiah. There are only sheep and goats—nothing in between. A man’s either got to be all-out for this war and slavery, or he’s a Yankee abolitionist.”
Irons studied Clay carefully. They were riding toward the Yancy place, meeting Buford for a hunting trip. For both of them it was an escape from the pressures of life, for the minister was in little better shape than Clay. He had tried to speak of patience, of trying to work things out with the North, and had been branded a traitor by some of his most prominent board members.
“What will you do, Clay?” he asked suddenly. “If war comes, you’ll have to decide. As you say, there’s no such thing as neutrality in this thing.”
“I have no idea, Jerry. What will you do?”
Irons shrugged, and the two men rode on silently, both deep in thought. “I’ve got fine friends in the North, Clay,” Irons said finally. “Hate to think about fighting them.”
“And there are Rocklins who’ll be wearing Union uniforms. How can I shoot at my own family?”
It was a discussion that was going on all over the country, and no one ever reached an answer. In the end, the two men veered away from the subject. “That young woman, Deborah, has certainly plowed up a snake!”
“You mean with Dent? She sure has. I expect those two will have to be separated before they shoot each other! They get into those awful arguments about slavery that serve no purpose. I like the girl, but she ought to go home.”
Irons thought about it, then remarked, “Melora says she’s attracted to Dent.”
Clay stared at him, then laughed. “Well, she takes a funny wa
y of showing it! Dent’s been pretty cool toward me since I came back, but I feel sorry for the boy. He’s so besotted with that girl he can’t see straight, but he’s got as much chance of getting her as—as—”
“As I have of getting Melora,” Irons finished gloomily.
Clay glanced at his friend, not sure what to make of that remark. “Don’t give up, Jerry,” he said quietly. “Melora’s worth waiting for.”
“Clay, I don’t think she’ll ever marry.”
They got to the Yancy cabin and found Buford ready to go. To their surprise they found Melora dressed in her old overalls, obviously ready to join the hunt. “I’m not getting left behind this time,” she declared.
“Who’s going to watch the kids?” Clay asked.
“Lonnie and Bobby, that’s who!” Buford declared grimly. “They don’t deserve to go with growed-up men!” He refused to say what the boys had done to disgrace themselves, but it must have been serious. Buford shook his head, saying, “Do them good to learn to act like grown people instead of babies!”
They all got in the wagon that carried the tents and the supplies, and they drove for hours. The deep woods began to close about them late that afternoon, but they pressed on until dusk. Pulling the team up, Buford said, “You two fellers get the tents up. I’ll do the important things—like catching some bullhead catfish outta that crick.”
Clay and Jeremiah began to set up the tents but made such a mess out of it that they began to argue, each convinced that the other was incompetent. Melora came over from where she was building a fire to cook the hypothetical fish that her father was to bring and began to laugh at them. “Two grown men, and you can’t put up a tent!”
“Well, if the preacher would just do what I tell him to do—!” Clay sputtered.
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