North and South: The North and South Trilogy (112 page)

Presently, after darkness fell, the train jerked to a halt. Lamps burned on a rickety platform. By their light he saw a northbound train standing on the other track. Passengers were crowding the platform, taking the opportunity to escape the smoky cars for a little while. Those around Orry got up to do the same. He felt no inclination to move.

“Where are we?” he asked a conductor.

“Relay House.”

“Why are both trains stopped?”

“To pick up passengers from a local from the east shore. There’ll be some people going north, some going south.”

“That’s fitting,” Orry said. The conductor looked at him as if he were unbalanced.

Staring into the rain, Orry suddenly spied familiar faces. He jumped up, took three long strides down the aisle. Then, abruptly, he halted.

Bending to peer through another window, he studied his sister and her husband. Would he compromise the young couple or create danger for them if he spoke to them? Billy was in uniform.

He let out an oath. For a second he had started to think like the mob:
If you’re a Southerner, you’re a traitor.
He walked quickly to the head of the car.

Rain struck his face as he worked his way across the platform. “Brett? Billy?”

Surprise and confusion registered on the faces of the young couple when they recognized him. A few people gave him suspicious looks, but his rosette reassured them.

“What in the world are you doing here?” Brett exclaimed.

“Going home. I paid a visit to Lehigh Station. George said he was expecting you any time.”

“I’m on leave,” Billy said. “After that, everything’s pretty uncertain.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Fine. No permanent damage.” He circled Brett’s waist and held her. “Those two or three hours after the wedding seem more like a bad dream than anything else. To this day I’m not sure why all of it happened.”

“Nor I,” Brett added. Orry still didn’t know whether he’d ever be able to tell her of Ashton’s involvement.

She noticed his rosette. “Where did you get that? You haven’t undergone some miraculous conversion, have you?”

“Not quite. George gave it to me. To get me through enemy lines, you might say.”

The east-shore local was chugging in. Passengers got off and rushed for the other trains with their luggage. “How is George?” Brett asked.

“Good as ever.”

She touched him gently. “How are you?”

“Better than I ever expected to be. I reckon you don’t know Madeline LaMotte left her husband. She’s staying at Mont Royal. We’ve been—friends for years.”

Brett showed no surprise. Instead, she smiled. “I suspected something like that. Oh, there’s so much to ask you, Orry—I can’t think of a quarter of it.”

A conductor from the northbound train called impatiently, “All aboard, please. We’re half an hour late as it is.”

Brett flung her arms around her brother’s neck. “When will we see you again?”

“Not for a while, I expect. I don’t think even Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Davis knows what’s going to happen next. Whatever it is—even if there’s fighting—I want the Hazards and the Mains to keep their ties unbroken. There are few things in the world that matter as much as friendship and love. They’re both very fragile. We must preserve them till these times pass.”

“I promise we will,” she said, all at once crying.

“Here’s the strongest bond yet. “ Billy lifted her left hand to display her wedding ring.

Orry nodded. “I finally realized that. It’s the reason I changed my mind about the marriage.”

“I’m glad you did,” Billy said, smiling.

“Boooard!”
the conductor cried. His colleague on Orry’s train repeated the cry. The northbound conductor jumped to the steps of a coach and waved to the engineer. The noise—steam, bells, voices—instantly increased.

Billy and his brother-in-law shook hands. Orry hurried back to his car. Steam billowed up, hiding the platform that had become deserted within a space of seconds. The engine on the northbound track lurched, and soon both trains were pulling away in opposite directions, leaving the little island of light behind as they gathered speed in the vast dark.

In Washington, Orry again changed trains, this time to an express. Just before it departed, four men got aboard, young men in civilian clothes struggling with a great assortment of valises and parcels. From their posture and the way they moved, Orry knew they were soldiers. Southern soldiers going home.

They took seats two rows behind him. He listened to their conversation. Would Lincoln and Jeff Davis send armies into the field? Would the trains soon stop running? Would new currency be printed in Montgomery? Their questions were innumerable, answers nonexistent.

The rain slacked to a drizzle. Chugging slowly through the seedy capital district, the train crossed some of the sloughs and vacant lots so common there. In one weed-grown field Orry saw a military unit drilling. There were a few lanterns scattered here and there, but the dark figures were discernible chiefly because of a faraway light source, indefinable except as a bright, ghostly glow. He saw rows of bayonets on musket barrels; for an instant while he watched, one bayonet glittered like a star.

The militia was marching and counter-marching in the rain because Washington was vulnerable now. Just across the river was Virginia, the country of the enemy.

Where was Lee? Where were some of Orry’s old comrades from Mexico? Little Mac McClellan, whom he had envied but never liked. Jackson, who had gone off to teach cadets at the Virginia Military Institute. Breezy George Pickett, such a good soldier and so seldom serious. How he’d love to see some of them again.

But not on a red field. Not if opposing generals arranged the reunion. Men who had been almost as close as brothers at the Academy might at this very moment be planning campaigns to annihilate one another. It was unthinkable, and it had happened.

He saw it all summed up in the blind marching of that nameless unit, a vision of gaunt shapes, sharp shiny steel, dim lamps flaring in the rain. The war machine was rolling. God help us all, he thought.

A light rain was falling on Tradd Street that night. Cooper wrote a letter he had been thinking about for some time. When he finished, he went searching for his wife. He found Judith just coming down from settling the children in bed. With war fever sweeping the state, Judah and Marie-Louise tended to become overly excited and stay up too late.

Without preamble, Cooper announced his decision. Judith’s response was a moment of stunned silence. Then:

“Do you mean it?”

“I’ve already signed the letter to the gentlemen who called on me. I’ll send it to Montgomery tomorrow. After the first of May, all the assets of the Carolina Shipping Company, including our vessels, belong to the Navy Department.”

She shook her head as she sat down. “How can you make that decision, believing as you do?”

“Neutrality is the coward’s way out. We either support the war or move north. I think secession’s wrong, and the institution that brought it about is even worse. I think we’ll be punished. Crushed. And yet”—a troubled look, a gesture—”I feel a loyalty, Judith.”

She looked skeptical. He drew a breath. “There’s one other part of my discussion with the committee members that I didn’t tell you about. They asked me to go to London as an agent for the department.”

“London?
Why?”

“Because they know the Confederacy can’t survive without food and manufactured goods supplied by others. Mr. Lincoln knows it too. Blockade is a weapon the Yankees will surely use against us. When it happens, there must be counterstrokes. A ship like the
Star of Carolina
—”

“What are you talking about?” Judith exclaimed, angered and upset. “She’ll never get off the ways!”

“I said one like her. Designed to carry heavy armament. Designed for war. A commerce raider. She would roam the earth and do inestimable damage to Yankee shipping.” He glanced at his wife from under his eyebrows. “Because of my experience here in Charleston, the department wants me to investigate the possibility of constructing such a vessel in Britain.”

“That means we’d have to take the children.”

“And be prepared to stay a year, perhaps more.”

“Oh, Cooper, how can we? The cause is wrong!”

“If not already lost,” he said with a nod. A flaming vision of Hazard Iron floated in his thoughts. “Still, even though I can’t explain my reasons fully or adequately, I feel I must go. No, let me be completely truthful. I want to go.”

Again she searched his face. “All right. I detest the idea, and I fail to understand your logic—if there is any. But you know I’d never desert you. I suggest you book steamer passage.”

“I already have. We leave from Savannah a week from Friday.” He took her in his arms and held her while she cried. Next morning, at the yard on James Island, he saw to the erection of a tall iron pole. When the pulleys and halyards were in place, he watched two of his men unfold a huge flag. It consisted of three broad bars running horizontally; the top and bottom ones were red, the center one white. A field of deep blue in the upper left held a circle of seven white stars.

He was struck by the resemblance between the new flag and that of the nation the seceding states had left. Even while we trumpet our independence, we can’t bring ourselves to cut all the cords, he thought as the Stars and Bars rode up the pole, caught the wind, and spread against the sky.

E
ARLY NEXT DAY, ON
a primitive road in south-central Alabama, a closed carriage bumped toward Montgomery. A dozen trunks and valises crowded the boot and the top. Rex was driving. Inside, Huntoon labored at a polished-oak lap desk. He had finally been summoned to take a minor governmental post, which satisfied him for the moment. Both his post and his influence would not remain minor for long. At that he had been more fortunate than many of the other leaders of South Carolina. Bob Rhett, for example, had been rejected as a candidate for president of the Confederate States because he was perceived as too extreme.

Huntoon was willing to take certain risks to establish himself. All during the final tiresome leg of their journey, from Columbus, Georgia, to Montgomery, he had been writing a memorial to the Confederate Congress. The thrust of it was an attack on the conservatism of the Confederacy’s provisional constitution. In language and scope, it was remarkably close to the old Constitution, except that slavery was protected. But, rather remarkably, the new constitution prohibited the African slave trade. That provision definitely had to be changed.

Huntoon’s memorial also called for the new confederation to name itself the United States of America, thus demonstrating to the world that it represented the one true constitutional government on the continent. He argued that the Yankees were the ones who had perverted the principles of the Founding Fathers.

At the moment he was stuck on the conclusion. He had written, “We must prove that an aristocracy can govern better than a mob,” but he could go no further. Perhaps it was the sight of his wife that distracted him and barred the smooth flow of words.

Ashton was leaning against the interior wall, gazing out the window at the pleasant cotton fields through which the road twisted and dipped. Despite dust and the general disarray produced by travel, she looked extremely fetching, Huntoon thought. He felt a physical response and recalled that it had been more than a month since he had been permitted to enjoy intimate relations. She didn’t seem to need that from their marriage any longer.

He cleared his throat. “My dear? I’ve run aground. Perhaps you can help me frame a felicitous conclusion.”

He held out the last of several closely written sheets. Pouting, she batted it away.

“I’m not interested in all that silly jibber-jabber, Jamie.”

Under the desk his rigidity wilted. From his expression, she decided she had stung him a little too hard. She leaned over to allow him to feel her tightly bound breast against his sleeve.

“Montgomery will be a wonderful experience for us. What matters isn’t the verbiage, the philosophy, but the power we—you can accumulate and use. We waited a long time for this opportunity. We mustn’t fritter it away on useless exercises.”

She had grown excited; the thought of power always had that effect. If her husband didn’t climb as high or as swiftly as she thought he should, there would certainly be others in Montgomery worthy of her consideration. In Montgomery or Richmond, she amended silently; there was already widespread talk about the capital soon being moved out of the cotton belt to Virginia.

The conversation, as well as a long period of self-denial following Forbes’s untimely death, had built tension within Ashton. Even if she didn’t like her husband very much, he could be used to relieve it.

“Jamie, Jamie—put that silly paper away. Can’t you see I’ve been missing your company terribly?”

“You have? I hardly noticed.”

His cynicism was only a momentary pose. With a touch of her hand, she brought him to impatient tumidity. Ashton was a little surprised at the suddenness and intensity of her own desire.

He forced her over against the opposite seat, one hand constricting on her breasts, one groping up her leg beneath her skirts. Dreadful, crude man, she thought. But he would serve. She closed her eyes and imagined a gala ball at which she was presented to President Davis, who was utterly charmed by her intelligence and beauty.

As the coach labored on, Rex scratched his head and leaned out to one side. He was intensely curious about the cause of so many loud creaks and cries from within. But, alas, the angle was wrong; he couldn’t see a thing.

That same night, Elkanah Bent stood at the bar in Willard’s Hotel.

He was sipping whiskey while he totted up figures on a scrap of paper.

He was pleased by the final sum. After paying the tailor’s bill for his new uniforms, he would have just enough left to lease the small flat he had found. Many good houses and apartments had become available in Washington recently; scores of traitorous officers and bureaucrats were fleeing home to the South.