Well, Charles could scarcely be described as a rival, particularly as he was on his way out of Marietta’s life, so Jack swallowed his disappointment with a smile.
‘The one after that, then.’
‘Agreed,’ said Marietta, who would rather have danced with Jack than with Charles, who was already approaching her to claim her as his partner.
They were halfway through their dance when he said to her, ‘If I asked you if I might speak privately to you for a few minutes, would you refuse me?’
It was an odd way, Marietta thought, to ask such a question. On the other hand, it was typical of Charles’s pleasantly reserved manner. He never took anything for granted and she had already noticed with what careful consideration he always behaved towards others.
‘No,’ she told him. ‘I would not refuse you because I know you well enough now to understand that your request is a serious one.’
‘Excellent,’ he said in his calm way. ‘Perhaps when this dance is over we could find somewhere quiet where we could talk for a moment and not be interrupted.’
Marietta could not but be surprised at the interesting fact that this was the second occasion this evening on which a gentleman had made such a request of her, and she wondered what the gist of it would be this time. The dance over, she led him to the ante-room where she had spoken with Avory. He beckoned her to a chair but refused to seat himself, standing before her, his grave face even graver than usual.
‘First of all,’ he began, ‘I must inform you that were it not apparent that your affections are engaged elsewhere I would have attempted to woo and win you for myself. It is rare to find in one person all the traits which I most admire in women. Had I met you before Jack did, then I would not have hesitated to press my suit but, knowing you both, and admiring him as well as his brother, I decided to stand back. Having said that, and wishing you both well, I feel compelled to tell you of something which is troubling me.’
He paused before continuing. ‘It grieves me to have to do so, for two reasons. The first is that it concerns a relative of yours, and the second is that I may be wrong, but I fear that I am not. It is this. I have noted the manner in which your cousin Sophie looks at you and Jack when she thinks that no one is watching her. I would ask you to be on your guard where she is concerned. Having come to know her, I believe that she would not hesitate to injure in some manner either or both of you.
‘Take care, Miss Marietta. If you were a man I would say, Watch your back. I regret to say that I believe that there is a strain of viciousness in her such that she would stop at nothing if she thought that she could injure you. You may dismiss what I have to say as moon madness, but I beg that you will not. I shall not speak of this again, nor shall I mention it to Jack. I have only spoken to you of it on this, my last night in Washington, and that with the greatest reluctance.’
Marietta hardly knew what to say to him. ‘I think, perhaps,’ she ventured hesitantly, ‘that her bark is worse than her bite. Oh, she is rude to me, I know, but I cannot believe that she would do anything actually wicked—which is what you are suggesting.’
He bowed to her. ‘Your goodness does you credit, Marietta. I can only pray that you are right.’ He leaned forward and took her hand which, unconsciously, she was twisting in her lap.
‘You will allow,’ he said softly, and kissed the back of it before relinquishing it. ‘I wish you well, and Jack, too, and trust that I am wrong. Honour demands that I leave you once I have returned you to Miss Percival. I may not speak more with you.’
Marietta watched him go, straight-backed and tall, and wondered whether she would ever meet him again. He had hardly left her before Sophie rounded on her.
‘That was Charles Stanton with you, wasn’t it?’ she exclaimed. ‘Thank goodness he’s off to the South. I shall be spared his frozen face and his boring conversation.’
She could scarcely have said anything more calculated to make Marietta wonder whether Charles’s doom-laden warnings about her should be given any credence. The arrival of Jack, ready to claim his dance with her, drove Charles and Sophie out of her head. Long afterwards she was to ask herself whether her introduction to passion had made her unwary, had given her the illusion that happy endings, particularly for herself and Jack, were easy, and that Charles was exaggerating what he thought that he had seen.
Held lightly in Jack’s arms, enjoying the dance and its music, Marietta surrendered to life’s pleasures—something which she had rarely ever done before, and had never thought that she would.
Sophie’s moanings about the war were reinforced when Washington became even more a city under siege. After the Southern sympathisers had flocked out of it, profiteers and entrepreneurs flocked in. Behind them came a large train of women, there to serve the needs of the vast body of unattached men who filled the city and found themselves idle before the fighting began.
Expensive and stately, poor and cringing, their advertisements in the daily papers made their presence known to the virtuous women of Washington. For her part Marietta found it difficult to pretend that they did not exist, nor that they were not necessary—opinions which, of course, she could not voice.
Jack privately commented to the Senator one day that only in the United States would such services be openly acknowledged, to be met with the Senator’s wry answer, ‘At least, sir, we do not pretend that these women have no existence, which I believe is the attitude taken in Britain and its colonies.’
The coonskin-hatted gentleman, Brutus M. Clay, of Kaintuck, or Kentucky, whom Alan had imitated on that famous night at Willard’s, went so far as to set up a Strangers’ Guard, a group of vigilantes led by himself, all handsomely equipped with Bowie knives as well as hats like his. They were dedicated to maintaining law and order, as well as being ready to save Washington from subversive attack.
‘An attack from what?’ joked Jack when he heard the news. ‘One might rather think that Washington might need a guard to protect it from him!’
‘Oh, but,’ said Senator Hope quietly, ‘little though I like the man, there are many here who privately sympathise with the South, and who knows what might happen if the South suddenly seemed to be winning the war? If Clay discourages them, all to the good.’
Not for the first time Jack was compelled to face the difference between Transatlantic and European manners. There was an initiative, a sense of doing what one had to do without overmuch deference to normal forms. The frontier was never far away. Behaviour in New South Wales, he felt, lay somewhere between the two extremes.
He said so to Marietta one morning. He had driven her, the Senator and Sophie to Pennsylvania Avenue, there to cheer the entry into the capital of the 7th New York Regiment.
‘They look like the Praetorian guard of ancient Rome come to life again,’ said the Senator when watching them march past. Like many of America’s rulers, he was fond of a classic turn of phrase and not afraid to use it in private as well as in public.
There, on that bright morning, in the first fever of the war, when few had seen action and scarcely any lives had been lost, the soldiers were received hysterically. Even Marietta forgot that she was a lady and cheered them, there in the street, forgetting all etiquette. Only Jack, not so emotionally committed to the war, was left to wonder how many of the smiling boys, received with such ecstatic delight, would survive the months of fighting to come.
For the moment, however, no one was fighting and dying near Washington. Not only were the soldiers’ uniforms bright and unspotted, but their presence had the charm of novelty—a novelty which would be lost when the war became bloody and brutal and dragged on and on.
For the present, though, all was new and exciting, and even when President Lincoln took on the powers of a dictator no one complained: it was the necessities of war which had compelled him, after all. Normal democratic procedures took too long, and when Lincoln realised that iron-clad warships would never be built if their orderly but slow democratic procession through various c
ommittees was adhered to, he promptly side-tracked everyone and everything by setting up a final committee and telling them to get on with the business at once.
‘Instanter,’ Jack said, laughing, when he told Senator Hope the news on his return from the Capitol. He and Butler had been summoned there to give expert advice. ‘That was the word the President used to urge the legislators on. Several senior Civil Servants nearly dropped dead on the spot from shock. It appears that he thinks that it would be a good thing if they did. Once dead, they couldn’t thwart him. After it was over he gave immediate orders for the building of an iron-clad to go ahead once a special panel has decided which submitted design to use. Ezra and I think that the order is sure to go to John Ericsson and the New York yards because only they have the ability to build something so innovatory.’
‘You will be leaving us, then,’ said the Senator.
Jack nodded. ‘Not immediately. The Secretary of State has asked me to be the only civilian member of the largely Naval special panel. After that I shall leave to work with whoever wins the order. I hope that it will be Ericsson. I also have to gain permission from Ezra to go to New York. He’s a bit of a traditionalist, wedded to wooden ships, but even he can see where the future lies, so I’m sure he’ll give it.’
Sophie, who was present, yawned her boredom while the others talked enthusiastically about the war and its ramifications. Jack’s enthusiasm particularly made her want to scream. What made everything worse was that she had patently lost him—to Marietta of all people; there could be no doubt of that. All that he wanted to do these days was talk to her about the most boring things under the sun.
How could someone as attractive as Jack want to talk for hours on end to that plain stick? He hardly knew that Sophie existed any more. He had eyes, ears and tongue only for her—and the war, the dratted war, of course.
Marietta, on the other hand, was delighted for him. The only fly in her ointment was that he would shortly be leaving Washington.
Ezra Butler made no bones about Jack leaving him to work with Ericsson in New York. ‘All the better for the peace when it comes,’ he said. ‘We shall be up to date, our know-how will equal anyone’s.’
‘True,’ replied Jack. ‘It wouldn’t do for Butler and Rutherfurd’s to be left behind when the world turns and iron ships rule the seas. I am quite determined to work with you when that happens. I am applying for American citizenship.’
Ezra looked at him and thought of Jack’s father, and thought, too, of how much he resembled him, although he would never be quite as cunning: Jack was too good-natured.
‘I’m willing to offer you a full partnership,’ he said, thinking of Jack’s wealth as well as his know-how. ‘If you’ve half your pa’s savvy you’ll be a real acquisition—and God help our rivals.’
‘Oh, I’m not the Patriarch,’ said Jack gaily. ‘There’ll never be another like him.’
It was a judgement which he was to remember years later, in very different circumstances, when he was compelled to acknowledge ruefully that foretelling the future is a tricky business—particularly when the Patriarch’s unlikely re-incarnation had not even been born!
‘We are, of course,’ he added, ‘assuming that the North will win the war.’
‘Not a doubt of it,’ asserted Ezra robustly. ‘It will take some time, though. There are fools who think that one big battle will end it soon. Besides, we’re not as ready as they are. I heard today that General Beauregard and his Secessionist army are only thirty miles away, and our troops are even greener and more raw than his are, and that is saying something! I fear that there will be a battle soon and that the North will not win it. On the other hand, the longer the war lasts the more certain we are to win it, and the less the South’s chances are.’
Jack nodded agreement. He, too, had been listening to the generals and politicians talking.
‘There is one point which is worth considering. If the Southern army is so near to Washington and it does win a major battle, what is to prevent Beauregard from advancing on the capital and taking it—and so ending the war in their favour before it has even begun?’
‘There is that,’ said Ezra, nodding. ‘But my bones say otherwise.’
‘Mine, too. Let us hope that they are speaking the truth—even if that means that we shall have a long and difficult road to travel before peace is restored.’
Neither Jack nor Ezra shared in the foolish optimism with which the majority of Washington’s citizens faced the coming war. Jack wondered how long it would be before he saw Marietta again once he had left for New York. Never before had the prospect of leaving a woman behind touched his heart.
How was it that I was once able to love ’em and leave ’em so easily? And that is not a difficult question to answer: I hadn’t met Marietta Hope then!
Chapter Seven
‘Really, Mama, it is more than time that we had the battle which will end this war,’ announced Sophie. ‘All the eligible men have left to fight it and only the dull and the crippled remain behind. Thank God Jack hasn’t gone to New York yet. At least I have one healthy partner left to dance with.’
July had arrived and Jack was still in Washington. Despite the President’s cutting of constitutional corners, it had taken quite a long time for designs for a new iron-clad warship to be submitted and examined. Neither had the war progressed in any material fashion. General Beauregard still sat and faced Washington, maintaining an ever-present threat. He was waiting for General Joe Johnston to bring up enough troops from the South by using the nearby railroad to make an assault on the capital possible.
Mrs Hamilton Hope said indulgently, ‘Well, count your blessings then, my dear. Your papa tells me that the committee are near to reaching a conclusion and it may not be long before Mr Dilhorne leaves Washington.’
‘What a bore,’ wailed Sophie angrily. Marietta, sitting in a corner, engaged in canvas work, was grateful that she was no longer responsible for her. Sophie’s parents, Mr and Mrs Hamilton Hope, had retreated to the capital from their Maryland estate whose safety they thought was threatened by the nearness of raiding Southern troops. Senator Hope had left for Boston on business while Aunt Percival had been called upon to act as midwife for yet another Percival relation, so that she, too, was absent from Washington.
Consequently Marietta had moved in to the Hamilton Hopes’ residence at their request. ‘You cannot be left on your own in that great house, child,’ Mrs Hope had exclaimed, as though Marietta was no older, nor more responsible, than Sophie herself. ‘You must come and stay with us.’
It would have been impolite to refuse, little though Marietta wished to leave her own well-run, comfortable home. She also missed Aunt Percival’s earthy common sense, which had little patience with Sophie’s whim whams, as she called them.
Aunt Percival, indeed, would have had little truck with Sophie’s latest proposal with which she was now bombarding her parents. She had been visiting Senator Eakins’s daughter Charlotte and was big with news.
‘The Senator says that at last something exciting is going to happen. It is nothing less than a great battle near Centerville which will end this horrid war. General McDowell is on the march and the Senator is going to take Charlotte and her mama to watch the battle, and he has suggested that Papa might like to take us all along with them. Do say yes, Papa, we may never get the chance again if we whip the Rebs straight away, for the Senator says that if we do—and we’re sure to—the war will end immediately.’
Neither Sophie’s father nor her mother ever opposed her wishes in anything, not even when it concerned such a dubious scheme as Marietta thought this to be. Like most of their friends, they had no notion of what war, or a battle, was really like, and when it became apparent that the majority of their circle was preparing to ride out to watch one they, too, decided to have a ringside seat. This was a frequent expression which Hamilton Hope used when he was talking to his friends in what he thought was a manly fashion.
Marietta�
��s protests were in vain. She had no wish to see the battle herself, and thought that it was neither safe nor proper for the Hopes to indulge themselves in undertaking such a dangerous expedition.
‘People will be killed,’ she said earnestly. ‘We might even get caught up in the battle itself. I am sure that when we have arrived there—if we arrive there safely—we shall not like what we are sure to see.’
‘Oh, you are always a spoilsport,’ exclaimed Sophie crossly. ‘The first time anything interesting happens you wish to put a damper on it. You really are a wet blanket, Marietta.’
Her annoyance with Marietta since Jack had defected to her could not be contained: it burst out all the time.
It was useless for Marietta to argue, to talk of blood, broken limbs and death.
‘We shall not really be very near,’ said Hamilton Hope comfortably, ‘and if it looks as though it may be growing dangerous we shall leave instanter, you may be sure of that.’
‘But it is not an entertainment,’ said Marietta desperately. ‘Young men will be dying, real young men shedding real blood. It will not be a play.’
‘Pooh, then,’ said Sophie rudely. ‘You need not come. I would never have thought that you would be a coward, Marietta, but then, you have never done anything exciting in your whole life, have you? Life, in fact, has passed you by.’ The look which she then gave Marietta was both patronising and scornful.
This stung. ‘I am not a coward,’ said Marietta stiffly. ‘But I find the whole thing unseemly and immoral.’
‘Immoral!’ said Sophie, raising her eyes to heaven. ‘We are fighting a war to end slavery and Marietta finds it immoral!’
The urge to slap Sophie had never been so strong, and only the presence of Sophie’s doting parents restrained Marietta.
‘I am sure,’ said Hamilton Hope, ‘that you will wish to accompany us, Marietta. It will be something for you to tell your grandchildren.’ Privately, though, he thought that his ramrod-straight niece was highly unlikely to have any. What man would want such a cold piece?
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