Heaven and Hell

66

"It's from Sam. In New York. My letter was sent on from St. Louis."

"What does he say?"

She scanned the page. "He was surprised to learn I was in South Carolina. He sends you his wishes for a quick recovery. He'll be happy to give the bride away as long as the ceremony doesn't interfere with a regular performance. What performance?" She turned the sheet over. "Oh, my. This is rather hard to take."

"What?"

"Claudius Wood liked Sam's Othello. He imported the production to fill a spot in his schedule and it turned into a huge hit. Sam says it's to run indefinitely at the New Knickerbocker. Eddie Booth's seen it twice. Oh, that is ironic. Sam working for the man who almost killed me."

She tossed down Trump's letter; it, too, had been forwarded from St. Louis.

"You sound angry."

"Well, yes. I Should be more tolerant. Sam's an actor, which means he's quite like a little child in some ways. Children's wishes are often stronger than their loyalties. Sam constantly wished for this kind of success — which is bad luck in the theater — so naturally it eluded him. Then when he wasn't looking for it, it arrived. It's foolish to expect him to turn his back on it. He's an actor."

"I think you said that."

"I did, but it explains everything. We'll just have to be married on whatever day the Knickerbocker is dark. That is, if you still —"

"I do. Come here."

Yellow light, summer light, painted the ceiling and the whitewashed wall behind the head of his bed. Work on the new house was ending for the day. Someone drove a last nail into a roof beam; the nailhead sang like a bell at each blow.

In the distance he heard the mill saw whining as it cut. He heard the shouts and the cracking whips of the muleteers driving their carts in the phosphate fields. Nearer, in the main room of the whitewashed house, Madeline and Willa were chatting about supper. They'd gotten along wonderfully from the day he and Willa arrived with the portrait of Madeline's mother in their luggage. Madeline wept when she saw the picture.

Warm in a new blue flannel nightshirt Willa had cut and sewn for him, Charles lay staring at the ceiling. The slatted shutters broke the wash of light into a pleasantly regular pattern. A large undefined area of his lower back, the left side, still hurt. But not as badly as before. He was getting better.

Red Bear and four of his Cheyennes had taken him to Camp Supply, unconscious. There a surgeon probed for the bullet without finding it. An Army ambulance delivered him to Duncan at Leavenworth. Gus was safe there, although Charles was too delirious to know it immediately. The brigadier telegraphed the playhouse, and Willa rushed to Kansas by train. During the three weeks in which she tended Charles and shared Maureen's bed, Sam Trump and company closed Trump's St. Louis Playhouse, and decamped to New York.

At Leavenworth, a contract surgeon tried to find the bullet. He failed. Day before yesterday, hoping to alleviate Charles's pain, a lanky freedman named Leander had made the third attempt. Leander said he'd been doctoring most of his adult life; he'd been the only source of medical help for fellow slaves on a Savannah River cotton plantation. Charles told him to go ahead, even though he knew the procedure could end in death.

Leander gave Charles a stick wrapped with a whiskey-soaked rag. While Charles bit down, crazy with pain, Leander cut into the wound using a flame-purified knife. Evidently Scar's lump of lead had shifted recently. Leander found it quickly and removed it with a loop of baling wire.

Beyond the half-closed door, a third voice, smaller, thinner, interposed between those of the women. Charles inhaled the musky damp of the marshlands, felt the faint tickle of pine pollen at the back of his throat. Every year, regular as God's wrath, it dusted every surface yellow-green. He was home.

It wasn't the completely happy experience he'd anticipated when he persuaded Willa to accompany him to Mont Royal for the lengthy recuperation. Madeline was rebuilding the great house in Orry's memory, but the plantation had undergone many changes that struck him as foreign and crass. Nothing was gracious any more. It was all steam engines and dug-up rice fields.

Madeline was estranged from Cooper and ostracized by the white families of the district. An organization he knew little about, the Kuklux, had terrorized the district for a while. Klansmen had murdered Andy Sherman, whom he remembered as a slave without a last name. They'd killed a white schoolteacher, too. The sweet lonely melody of home that he had whistled for years was somehow off-key, inappropriate.

And then there was the problem of the boy who no longer knew how to smile.

Gus remained a polite child. Carrying a little round hat with a floppy brim that Willa had bought, for him in Leavenworth, he came into the bedroom quietly. His feet, in rope-and-leather sandals, left a trail of water spots. Willa must have insisted that he wash after he came in from playing. But he still had mud between his toes.

Gus stood by his father's bed. "Are you feeling all right, Pa?"

"Much better today. Would you pour me a drink of water?"

The little boy put his hat on the bed and juggled the cup and large china pitcher. The water gurgled into the cup. Gus watched the stream carefully. On the boy's right cheek, Bent's cut was hardening into scar tissue; a dark ridge in a sun-washed landscape.

Gus touched the scar often but never mentioned it, or the whole dark period of the whiskey ranch. Willa, who granted that she was no expert on mental problems, nevertheless thought common sense dictated silence on the matter for a while yet.

Gus handed the cup to his father. The water was tepid. "Guess what I saw down by the sawmill, Pa."

"What?" Charles said.

"A big white bird with legs like sticks. This long. He was standing in the water but he flew away."

"Egret," Charles said.

"Guess what else I saw. I saw some other birds flying in a line. I counted five. The first one would do this" — he waved his arms up and down — "and the others did it, too. When the first one stopped, they stopped. They had funny mouths, big mouths." He stuck out his lips. "They flew that way." He pointed seaward.

"Brown pelicans, maybe. Pretty far upriver. Did you like seeing them?"

"Yes, I liked it." There wasn't a jot of pleasure in the reply, or even the slightest smile on the small, well-formed mouth, which always reminded Charles of Augusta Barclay's. How long would it be until the boy didn't hurt any more? Forever?

"I'm hungry now," Gus said, and left.

Charles turned his head away from the door. Familiar guilt lapped at him, a kind of stomach-sickness. He pictured the scar. I let it happen.

He had a lot to do to make up for it. I have to leave him something better than scars when he grows up. He knew of nothing so valuable as money. The simple repayments of fatherly affection and attention — of course he'd make those. They were not enough, though. Not nearly enough. Because of the scare — the visible one and the ones hidden within.

After dark, when the pond frogs and chuck-will's-widows tuned up for their nightly concert, Willa came in and sat with him. Charles set the lamp wick higher, to see her better. Her hair shone like white gold.

"I'm still searching for that place for us," she said. "I don't care where it is; I'll go anywhere with you."

"What about being an actress? You don't want to give that up, do you?"

She wiped a smudge of flour from her thumb. "No, but I will." She studied him. "Wait. You're thinking of something —"

He pushed himself back, straightening, shifting the pillow behind his shoulders. His hair showed a lot of gray now. He'd shaved his mustache and beard, and Madeline and Willa both said he looked ten years younger. "I thought of it day before yesterday, just before Leander cut me and I fainted. Texas. I loved Texas. I learned soldiering, so I don't see why I couldn't learn ranching."

"You mean raise cattle?"

"That's right. I could build a house for us, and put together a herd. The beef market's good. More and more cattle are shipped east all the time."

"I've never seen Texas," she said.

"Pretty godforsaken in some parts. But others are beautiful."

"What would we do for money? I haven't saved much."

"I could go to work for someone else till I learn the business and put a hunk aside."

She brought her warm mouth against his and kissed him lightly but firmly. "You'll have to save a lot. I want a huge old house. I want to raise Gus with brothers and sisters."

"I'll do it, Willa." Some liveliness animated his voice at last. "The truth is, I want to be rich." To pay for the scars. "We could settle near some town of decent size, so that, when the money comes in, I can build you a theater. An opera house of your very own."

She hugged him. "Charles, that's a lovely dream. I think you'll do it, too."

He watched the shadows of a woman and a boy outside the partly closed door. He heard Gus ask Madeline a question.

"I promise I will," he said.

Early June in the Low Country. Even sweeter and brighter than Ashton remembered. Warm air not yet tainted by the sickening humidity of full summer. A pure blue sky conveying a sense of repose, even languor.

The matched team was the color of milk. Each horse sported a white pompon fitted to the headstall. The carriage was a barouche with gleaming lacquered side panels. Before leaving Charleston, Ashton had insisted that the two black men in threadbare livery fold the top down.

She sat facing forward in the hired rig. Patterns of sun and shadow from the trees passed rhythmically over her face. Her dark eyes had a liquid look. Surrounded by the sights and scents of her childhood, she found herself struggling against a messy sentimentality.

Opposite her, oblivious to the charms of the scene, sat Favor Herrington, Esquire, a Charleston lawyer recommended to her when she said she wanted someone who put success ahead of professional ethics.

Mr. Herrington's appearance and demeanor were unimpressive. A pale, slight man of thirty-five or so, he had a mustache so small and fine, it resembled an accidental pen stroke. Below his lower lip, which receded, something resembling a lump of dough substituted for a chin. Herrington's thick 'Geechee accent was, in Ashton's opinion, decidedly inferior to her own cultivated Charleston speech. Nevertheless, at their first meeting, the lawyer had fawned and "Yes, ma'amed" her with such juicy extravagance that she immediately recognized one of her own kind. Underneath his airs, he was unscrupulous.

Ashton remembered this part of the road. Something dried her throat. "Slow down, driver. That's the turn ahead."

Herrington fastened the brass latch on the old leather case containing all the papers. He straightened his cravat as the barouche turned up the long lane. Through the cloudy black of the veil Ashton lowered over her eyes, she saw the raw yellow framing of the new Mont Royal.

Why — the house was huge!

All the better.

"I have the honor to present you with these documents," Favor Herrington said. "Bill of sale, closing statement, deed — and this, to which you'll want to pay special attention."

Ashton's lawyer had expected to find the buxom mulatto woman, to whom he was addressing his remarks. But he hadn't anticipated the presence of the man with powerful hands and weathered skin who limped out in his blue nightshirt as Madeline confronted the visitors on the shady lawn. Nor did Herrington know who the pert young woman with pale blond hair was. Perhaps the man's companion.

The barouche stood nearby. The two black men in livery patted and soothed the white horses. Charles warily watched the woman sitting motionless in the rear seat. She wore burgundy velvet and a heavy black veil. There was something forbidding about her. Something that reminded him of — what?

With a stunned expression, Madeline took the blue-covered document Herrington had presented last. "That is an eviction order," the lawyer said pleasantly. "Yesterday, at the Palmetto Bank, the mortgage on Mont Royal plantation was liquidated and title to the property was sold to my client." He indicated the veiled woman.

Madeline shot Charles a bewildered look. She turned over page after page of finely inscribed clauses. She found a name. "Mrs. W. P. Fenway. I don't know any Mrs. Fenway."

"Why, my dear, you most certainly do," said the woman in the barouche. She wore mauve gloves, and the little finger of each was elevated slightly. Her hands were graceful as floating birds as she lifted the veil.

"I never expected to lay eyes on you, Cousin Charles." Ashton stood on the coarse grass near the whitewashed house. Spite bubbled in her dark eyes. "Wherever have you been all these years? You look ever so much older."

He could say the same about her. Still, her beauty remained undimmed, almost perfect. Not much of a surprise in that. He could remember her long ago, avoiding the sunshine, fussing for hours, alone, before she appeared in a new party dress. Her looks had always counted for a lot. Evidently they still did. It was her eyes that gave away the changes wrought by time. The haughty, hard eyes. Where had she been? What had she seen and done?

"What do you want here?" Madeline asked, still recovering from the moment the rising veil had revealed the visitor's face.

"Mont Royal is all," Ashton said with a vicious flirt of her eyes. "It's my family's land. Main land. It isn't yours. Your husband, my brother, drove me off the property. I always swore I'd come back and do the same. Or worse."

"Ashton, for God's sake — Orry's been dead over four years."

"So I was informed. Pity." She stepped up on the worn pine stoop, peered inside the house. "How primitive. One of the first things I must do is install a Fenway piano in the new house. You find them in all the best parlors."

Willa caught her breath. "That's what I was trying to remember. Fenway pianos. Sam bought a Fenway for the theater last Christmas."

"Yes, that's my husband's company. And it's expanding ever so fast. Success breeds success, don't you agree?"

Madeline looked dazed. As Charles took the blue-covered document from her, she said, "God, what is happening?"

"Why, it couldn't be simpler, dear," Ashton trilled. "I have bought this entire place."

"From Cooper?" Madeline asked, disbelieving.

"Yes indeed, and you needn't sound so surprised, either. It's true that I made the purchase anonymously. I mean, I didn't appear for the closing, or at any other time, so my dear brother doesn't know that Mrs. Willard Fenway is also his not-so-loving sister. I suppose he'll be a mite exercised about the deception when he finds out. But I don't imagine he'll regret the sale. He got a fine price, and besides, I understand he's been very unhappy about your stewardship here — and your politics. You refused to behave like a respectable white woman. Instead, you flaunted your nigger school. Well, the only way Cooper could get out of his bargain with you was to sell. I'm told he also had another good reason for doing it. You helped his daughter run away and marry some carpetbagger. But then you and Orry always were a crazy, self-righteous pair. Mr. Dawkins says Charleston can't wait to see you gone. Neither can I."

In the silence, the hatred was almost palpable. Ashton swept her eyes across the exposed beams of the new house. "Willard and I have discussed a winter residence in a climate gentler than Chicago's. This should be ideal."

Willa unthinkingly dug her fingers into Charles's arm. She didn't understand all the circumstances behind the confrontation but she recognized its dire nature. There was noise from the foot of the slope leading down to the Ashley: Gus, chasing half a dozen geese kept by a freedman's wife.

Madeline took a long breath. "Ashton, I don't have any home but this one. I beg you —"

"Beg? How charming. How very quaint. It must be a new experience for you."

Rage colored Madeline's face suddenly. "You don't know what you've taken on, buying this plantation. Mont Royal isn't what it was when you lived here — a lazy, sheltered domain. It's a complex business. Part of a hard, complex world. We don't grow any more rice than we can eat. We're entirely dependent on the sawmill, and on the developers of the phosphate fields. Almost forty men live here. Free men, with families. They work so they can have homes, and schooling for their children. You don't want the responsibility for them —"

"Madeline, sweet, I've already bought Mont Royal. So all of this is just chatter."

"No. You've got to take care of those people."

"A bunch of niggers? Oh, fie," Ashton said, shrugging. "The black Republicans just stirred them up so they want what they aren't fit to have. My poor first husband James wasn't much, but he was right about the worthlessness of niggers. They'll get no special favors from me. They'll work all day for a cup and a crust or they can hike down the road and take their trashy litters of young with them."

"Ashton — please. Show a little humanity."

"Humanity?" she shrilled, no longer smiling. "Oh, I'm afraid not. My humanity went flying away the day your damn husband banished me from my birthplace. I swore I'd come back, and I have. Now it's you who's banished — and damned good riddance, too."

Silence again. Madeline stared at Charles, who raised the blue-covered eviction order, which he'd examined for the proper signatures of court officials. They were all there.

"There's no date on this," he said. "How long have we got?"

Sweet-eyed, Ashton purred, "Why, let's see. I do want to take possession before I return to Chicago, which I must do soon. My husband Willard's an older gentleman, you see. He counts on me for companionship. Of course I don't want to be uncharitable. I do consider myself a sensitive Christian person. Today is —" She sighed. "Mr. Herrington?"

"It's Friday, Mrs. Fenway. All day. Yes, ma'am."

"Then shall we say this same hour next Friday? I'll expect you and all your, ah, boarders to be packed for departure at that time, Madeline. 'Less, of course, you choose to stay and work for me like any other nigger."

Madeline's head tilted down fiercely. Charles stepped over to restrain her. Ashton's flawless smile stunned him again. He wondered why evil left some of its best disciples so unmarked.

"Friday," Ashton said.

In the act of returning to the barouche, she noticed Gus, who had come loping up the lawn, curious about the visitors. The boy stood beside a great live oak whose shadow darkened his scarred cheek.

"My, what an ugly little boy. Yours, Cousin Charles?"

She didn't wait for an answer.

Madeline gazed at the unfinished house. Tears of defeat welled and glistened in her eyes. "Orry, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry that I've destroyed everything."

She stood there quite a long time, lost in pain and self-recrimination. Charles spoke her name. She didn't seem to hear. He spoke again. Again there was no response. He raised his voice, and that way managed to penetrate her tearful state of shock.

When she heard what he proposed, she asked why. "We don't even know where he is. If we did, how could he help us? The documents look completely legal. The sale can't be undone."

Harshly, he said, "Madeline, I don't think you understand. You are going to be turned out one week from today. How much money do you have in your bank account?"

"Only a few dollars. I've had to pay the builders and Mr. Lee, the architect, a sizable monthly draw. It's taken almost all my income —"

"And there'll be no more now that Ashton holds title to the plantation. I'm going to send the message. To ask for a place where you can stay till you recover from this. I've no place to offer you. Cooper's house is closed to you —"

"My God, do you think I'd ask him for anything, after what he's done to us?"

"Granted, granted. All I'm saying is, at a time like this you've no choice but to call on friends."

"Charles, I won't beg!"

"Yes, that's exactly what we must do. I have a feeling that if you'd done it long ago, things might be different. Now there's no other choice."

She thought his idea was too humiliating to be borne. But she was emotionally drained, and she didn't argue any further. An hour later Grant rode out on a mule, leaving a dust trail. In his ragged pants he carried money and the draft of a telegraph message addressed to George Hazard in Lehigh Station, Pennsylvania.

67

There came a day when everything was different. He knew it the moment he woke.

The enormous bedroom was no different. The nymphs and cherubs frolicking on the ceiling were no different. The villa was no different, nor the morning fragrances of hot coffee, a pan of brioches baked before dawn, the fresh-cut flowers in the hallway vases. What was different was George himself. He didn't feel good, exactly. Physically, he was about the same: the usual touch of morning stomach from the red wine he loved and refused to give up. No, it was a subtler thing, but nevertheless quite real. He felt healed.

Lying there, he remembered a time of annoying discomfort before the war. Six or seven months of aggravation he thought would last forever. He'd broken a tooth, later extracted. Before the extraction, the tooth sat in his lower jaw like a forbidden love, one particular edge constantly tempting his tongue. He couldn't keep his tongue from that edge, so his tongue always hurt, and occasionally bled. Constance repeatedly urged him to have the tooth taken out. He was busy, or simply bull-headed, and didn't. His tongue hurt on the Fourth of July, and it still hurt on Christmas Day. That day, his disgust got the better of habit. He paid attention to keeping his tongue away from the tooth until he had it taken out in the first week of the new year. Then one morning in the winter — it was around the time Lincoln was attempting to reprovision Fort Sumter, where Billy was besieged as part of Bob Anderson's small engineer garrison — he woke up and everything was different. A healing lump remained on his tongue, but it didn't hurt any longer.

He tugged the bell rope and remained in bed until his valet knocked and entered with the silver coffee service and a brioche. He felt relaxed, comfortable, and full of memories of his two children, whom he hadn't seen since the preceding summer. Painted on the canvas of his imagination there appeared a great sweep of mountains above Lehigh Station, where the laurel bloomed. He longed to walk those green heights again. To survey the town, Belvedere, and Hazard's: the proud sum of what he had made of his life.

A pang of guilt troubled him. He didn't want to be too carefree, and thereby disloyal to the memory of Constance, and the ghastly death she'd suffered because of him. The telegraph message about Bent's execution, forwarded in a pouch by Wotherspoon, didn't relieve him of his obligation to mourn her. Still, this morning there was — well, a shifted emphasis. He didn't want to live in isolation in Switzerland forever. That was a clear, new thought.

His valet said in elegant French, "Mr. Hazard, I remind you that the gentleman who sent his card last week arrives this morning. Ten o'clock."

"Thank you," George said. The black coffee in the bone china cup tasted fine; the cook made it strong. He was curious about the man who'd sent his card, a journalist from Paris whom he'd never met. What did the man want? He found himself looking forward to finding out.

He climbed from bed and padded barefoot to the small writing desk. He let down the front. There, pigeonholed, lay the flimsy yellow sheet carrying Charles's message sent from Leavenworth. He knew the text by heart. It had gratified him when he first read it; even inspired a certain vicious thrill as he imagined Bent's last hours. He was past that now. He walked to the small hearth of green marble where his valet always laid a fire on cool mornings like this. He dropped the yellow flimsy into the flames.

Everything was different.

His visitor, a man of about sixty, made a poor first impression because of his untidiness. Dried mud covered his cavalry boots. He wore a military overcoat with a high collar from which the identifying insignia had been torn off. He'd cut the fingers out of both his mittens. His hair was long, hiding his ears and tangling into a chest-length beard. He had a portmanteau full of books and sheets of paper covered with notes written horizontally, vertically, obliquely, and continuously along the edges. The man's card had previously introduced him as M. Marcel Levie, Paris, political correspondent for La Liberté.

George quickly saw that his guest was neither crazy nor as careless as he looked. His appearance was a pose, probably to give him an aura of liberated intelligence. He was quick to respond when George asked about refreshment. Although it was only five past ten, Levie said he would have a cognac.

They sat on the sunny terrace above the lake in the blue softness of the morning. George sipped his second and last coffee. M. Levie said, "It came to the attention of our group in Paris that the wealthy American steelmaker Georges Hazard was on holiday in Switzerland."

"Not exactly a holiday," George said, explaining no further.

"I was delegated to approach you and, if possible, develop your enthusiasm for a scheme."

"Monsieur Levie, I am not actively managing my company right now. Therefore I'm not in a position to make business investments. I'm sorry you made the trip for nothing."

"Oh, but I didn't. This has nothing to do with business except in the broadest sense. I am here at the behest of our chairman, Professor Edouard-René Lefebvre de Laboulaye." George frowned, prompting the journalist to repeat the name. It teased George with a sense of familiarity, but he didn't know where he'd heard it before.

"Among his many accomplishments, the professor chaired the French Anti-Slave Society for many years. He is a great admirer of American liberty. On the night a few years ago when he conceived the scheme at his home in Glatingy, I recall his zestful conversation, his enthusiasm, because we had just been informed that Lee was defeated."

"Fine," George said. "Please go on."

"My friend the professor believes, as I do, that America and France are sisters in freedom. General Lafayette helped win your independence. Now America stands as an important beacon of liberty and human rights at a time when" — Levie squinted along the terrace like a conspirator — "France is grievously troubled."

At last George had a political orientation. His visitor was a liberal, and probably not a partisan of Emperor Napoleon III.

Levie rushed on. "What my friend proposes, and our group seconds, is a symbolic gift to your country. A monument or statue of some kind, representing mutual friendship and faith in freedom."

"Ah," George said. "Who would finance such a gift?"

"The French people. Through a public subscription, perhaps. The details are hazy as yet. But our goal is clear. We want to complete and present the monument in time for your country's one hundredth anniversary. Several years away, I grant you, but a project of this magnitude will not be brought to completion quickly."

"Are you talking about some kind of statue for a park, Monsieur Levie?"

"Oh, grander, much grander. On the night the idea was conceived, a young sculptor was present for another purpose entirely. An Alsatian. Bartholdi. Talented fellow. The conception of the monument will be his."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"The same things we request from any important American we hear of and contact on the Continent. An endorsement of the idea. A pledge of future support."

George was in such a fine mood because of the direction the new day had taken that he said, "I should think I could give you that without qualification."

"Splendid! That would be a noteworthy coup for us. What we are also trying to gauge, less successfully, is whether such a gift would be welcomed by the American government and the American people."

George lit a cigar and strolled to the balustrade. "You're very shrewd to ask the question, Monsieur Levie. Right off, you would expect that it would be welcome, but Americans can be a contrary lot. I receive newspapers from home regularly. What I glean from them is this. All that's foreign is suspect." He rolled the cigar between his fingers, thoughtful. "That would be especially true of a gift proposed by a country torn by strife between the right and the left, and ready to plunge into war with Prussia." He took a puff. "Such is my guess, anyway."

Downcast, the journalist said, "It confirms what Edouard has been told by members of the Philadelphia Union League."

George pointed with the cigar. "That's where I've heard his name. He's on our roster."

"That is so, although he has never been privileged to visit your country."

They discussed the European political climate for a while. Levie was vituperative about the Prussian premier, Otto von Bismarck, and his chief of the general staff, Moltke. "They are clearly bent on exacerbating tensions to the point of war. Bismarck dreams of reunification of the Germanic states — a new empire, if you will. Unfortunately our own so-called emperor is lulled by his conceits. He thinks he has built an invincible army. He has not. Further, Moltke has powerful breech-loading field guns, a superb spy system, and Bismarck to goad him. It will come out badly for France. I hope it will not come out badly for our scheme too."

"I'm familiar with General von Moltke," George said. "Two of his staff officers called here last month. They want to negotiate with my company for certain ordnance castings. Back in Pennsylvania, my general manager is working up figures. I've reached no decision on it yet."

Levie became less friendly. "You are saying the possibility exists that you might work for France on the one hand and against her on the other?"

"Unfortunately that's the iron trade, Monsieur Levie. Men in my profession are inevitably represented on both sides of battles."

Levie's hostility moderated. He squinted at his host. "You are forthright, anyway."

"And I'll say just as forthrightly that I'll do everything I can to support and promote your scheme if it develops along the lines you suggest. You can consider me one of your group, if you wish."

It was said before he quite knew he was going to. A gull swooped by and dove down toward the lake. A steamer whistle hooted. The sensations delighted his eye and heart. Everything was different.

After a moment, the journalist said, "Most certainly. You can be an important conduit for estimates of American reaction and opinion. Professor Laboulaye will be overjoyed."

He didn't say he was overjoyed, but they shook hands nonetheless. That evening, over a light supper at home of veal medallions and new beans — no pastries or heavy wines at night; his weight was becoming a visible problem, especially at the waist — George realized he had a new cause. Something not connected with the past, but instead, something that looked forward to the great celebration planned for 1876.

He finished his meal quickly, called his staff together, and announced that he was going home.

George sent a message to Jupiter Smith by the transatlantic cable and sailed from Liverpool on the Cunarder Persia. She was larger and more lavish than Mr. Cunard's earlier oceangoing vessels, whose austere cabins had earned the scorn of Charles Dickens. Persia advertised "Oriental luxury" and promised a quick ten-day crossing by means of her great forty-foot side paddles, assisted by sails when necessary.

The first night out, George drank too much champagne, waltzed with a young Polish countess, and surprised himself by spending the night with her. She was a charming, ardent companion, interested in the moment, not the future. He was pleased to discover his manhood had not atrophied. Yet the very detachment with which the young woman welcomed him to her stateroom and her bed only renewed his sense of love for Constance, and the attendant loss.

His mood was imperiled even more on the third day, when the huge steamship encountered heavy weather and began to roll and pitch like a toy. Though warned by the purser's men to stay off the decks, George wouldn't. He was drawn to the vistas of impenetrable gray murk with great fans of white water rising up to smash the funnels and sway the lifeboats and swirl around his feet as he gripped the teak rail. It was noon, and nearly as dark as night. Images of Constance, Orry, Bent flickered in his thoughts. The past ten years seemed to trail across his memory like a ribbon of mourning crepe. He lost the feeling of renewal from Lausanne and plunged backward again.

Something in him rebelled, and he sought to escape the bleakness by discovering its cause, by answering, if he could, certain questions that haunted him. Why was there so much pain? Where did it come from? The answers always eluded him.'

In the storm's murk, he glimpsed Constance again. He saw his best friend Orry. A set of conclusions came neatly out of the box of his mind.

The pain comes from more than the facts of circumstance, or the deeds of others. It comes from within. From understanding what we've lost.

It comes from knowing how foolish we were — vain, arrogant children — when we thought ourselves happy.

It comes from knowing how fragile and doomed the old ways were, just when we thought them, and ourselves, secure.

The pain comes from knowing we have never been safe, and therefore will never be safe again. It comes from knowing we can never be so ignorant again. It comes from knowing we can never be children again.

Losing innocence. Remembering heaven.

That was the essence of hell.

The liner's whistle bellowed. Members of the deck staff rushed in every direction. George felt the engines reverse. A white-coated steward told him two small children of an Italian olive oil millionaire had been washed into the sea from the stern. A search was conducted until dark, with great difficulty; two of the ship's boats capsized. The children were not found. Sometime during the night, curiously awake and tense beside the sleeping countess, George heard the engines throbbing differently. Persia was resuming her journey because there was nothing else to do.

68

On Sunday, at his home in Lehigh Station, Jupiter Smith received Charles's telegraph message. He told his wife to keep supper warm and walked rapidly down the hill to the depot. The operator was just lowering the shutter behind the wicket. "Send this before you go, Hiram," Smith said as he reached for a blank. He penciled quickly, in block letters.

MR HAZARD EN ROUTE HOME ON CUNARD LINE.

IMPOSSIBLE TO REACH HIM BUT AM CERTAIN

HE WILL GLADLY WELCOME

MRS MAIN FOR AN INDEFINITE STAY.

REGRET CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MAKE THIS NECESSARY.

J. SMITH ESQ.

Charles's message had conveyed the essence of the situation at Mont Royal. How Madeline Main's sister-in-law could be so harsh on a relative escaped Jupe Smith. He'd never met Ashton Main, though Constance had mentioned her several times, never in a complimentary way.

Hiram's key began to click. Smith stood silent in the dusty waiting room, feeling a familiar keen disappointment in the behavior of a majority of human beings. Just no explaining it —

As he opened the door to leave the depot, it occurred to him that perhaps someone else in the family should be informed of the appeal, in case help and encouragement of a more personal sort were needed. Self-centered Stanley couldn't be counted on to speak compassionately for the family, but another member could, now that she was reconciled with her brother, and considerably softened.

"Hiram, before you quit, send one more, will you? This one's going to Washington."

On Sunday, in the quiet of early morning, Sam Stout unlocked his Senate office. It was a lovely summer day; the office was already warm.

At his desk Stout arranged a small stack of foolscap sheets and began to answer correspondence from his constituents, most of them dull-witted farm people he held in contempt. A couple from his old House district in Muncie had sent eight Spencerian pages describing their son's qualifications for a Military Academy appointment. Stout knew nothing about the status of appointments from his home state, but he wrote "None available" and tossed the reply in a wire basket for his clerk to expand and send.

He started to read another letter but gave up almost at once. He threw his pen on the blotter and surrendered to the misery he'd been fighting through a long, wakeful night. When he'd divorced Emily to marry Jeannie, he and the young woman had agreed Sam was too old, and too busy with his career, to start a new family. Fine. He'd trusted the little bitch to keep the bargain. Last night, after a champagne supper, she'd announced that she would deliver a child seven months from now. Stout went to a separate bedroom for the night.

Not merely his personal life, but everything seemed to be failing. While giving speeches during his last swing into Indiana, he had sensed that his audience were sick of him and Republicans like him who waved the bloody shirt. Though it was just four years since Appomattox, the public was tired of divisive politics, tired of radical social programs. There were even some indications of disenchantment with the Grant administration, which had just taken office. Grant was a popular man but pitifully innocent. Stout's more cynical acquaintances said it wouldn't be long before the President's cronies were thieving and pillaging right under his nose.

It worried Stout. He'd backed Grant, though out of expediency, not principle. Now he feared he'd bet on a losing horse.

His own shallow convictions reminded him of Virgilia Hazard's stronger and more honest ones. That in turn reminded him of the physical side of their relationship. Virgilia seemed more alluring now that his wife had revealed her deceit. Perhaps he'd been wrong to toss Virgilia aside so hastily.

He snatched a sheet of foolscap and began to write. If he could pull this off, he sensed that everything else would right itself in due course. He poured passion into the phrases, and loneliness — even a difficult admission of his mistakes in the course of their relationship. He felt as cheerful as a twenty-year-old bachelor when he posted the letter early in the afternoon.

On Monday, Virgilia pulled her gray glove over the diamond ring on her left hand and picked up her portmanteau. A hack waited outside the Thirteenth Street cottage to take her to the railway station. She glanced around to be sure everything was in order. On the writing desk she noticed the insulting letter from Sam Stout. She'd forgotten it in the excitement of receiving Smith's message and her preparation to respond to it.

Virgilia's mouth set. She put the portmanteau on a chair and worked quickly with a match and wax to reseal Stout's letter. She inked lines through her own address and wrote his above it. Then she turned the envelope over and on the blank side printed NO.

She mailed it before she caught the night express for Richmond and Charleston.

On Tuesday, Willa again offered to help with the packing. Madeline had thus far put it off, as if anticipating some miracle. There would be no miracles.

"All right, we'll pack," she said, defeated. "There isn't a lot worth taking, but if we don't move it out, she'll destroy it."

She was wrapping pages from the Courier around the portrait of her mother; the brittle painting was now protected by glass and a frame. She heard the sound of a carriage and went to the door. It was Theo and his wife. The young Northerner pressed Madeline's hand in his and said he was sorry. Marie-Louise, pink-faced and healthy in her third month of pregnancy, gave freer rein to her emotions. She cried in Madeline's arms, and uttered sobbing condemnations of her father. Madeline patted her. It seemed she was always taking care of someone. She wished someone would take care of her.

Charles came in with a wooden packing box he'd hammered together to protect the portrait. He hadn't seen Marie-Louise in years, and there was a brief period of reintroduction. Charles's manner was brusque.

"Does your father know who really bought the plantation?"

Marie-Louise nodded. "The news was all over Charleston by Saturday noon. Mama said Papa spoke of it at supper that evening."

"And what did he have to say?"

She answered reluctantly. "That — that he liked his sister about as much as he liked everyone else in the family, which —" Red-faced, she blurted the rest: "Which wasn't very much any more."

Charles chewed his cigar so hard he nearly bit it in half. "Fine, Splendid."

"Mama was so mad when she told me, she said a curse word. I've never heard her curse Papa before. She said he's making so much money at the company now, he doesn't need Mont Royal, and he hasn't any feeling for the place. That's the reason he sold it." Madeline and Charles exchanged glances she didn't see. "Mama's just miserable over the whole business. I am too. Oh, Madeline, what are you going to do?"

"Pack. Wait until Friday. Leave when Ashton arrives. What else can we do?"

Willa took Charles's hand. No one answered the question.

On Wednesday, at dusk, Willa ran in from the lawn where she'd been teaching Gus a card game. "There's a carriage in the lane. A woman I've never seen before."

"Damnation." Madeline threw an old Spode saucer into the barrel, breaking off part of the edge. "I don't need strangers coming here to peer at us and cluck over our misery."

She heard the carriage grind to a halt. A few moments later, the woman in the gray traveling dress with matching hat and gloves stepped into the doorway. Madeline's exhausted face drained of color.

"My God, Virgilia."

"Hello, Madeline." The two women stared at one another, Virgilia uncertain of her reception. Charles clumped in from the bedroom, where he'd taken down a framed lithograph of the Plain at West Point. He nearly dropped it when he saw the visitor. Of course he remembered her, principally from her visit to Mont Royal with George and others in her family.

She was a fire-spitting abolitionist in those days. She flaunted a superior morality, and a hatred of all things Southern. He recalled Virgilia outraging her host, Tillet Main, the day James Huntoon came to accuse her of aiding the escape of Huntoon's slave Grady. She'd later lived with the runaway in the North.

Charles particularly recalled her proud, insulting admission of guilt that day. He had trouble reconciling the old Virgilia with this one. He remembered a vicious tongue; now she was soft-spoken. He remembered a slimmer girl; now she was stout. He remembered a careless wardrobe; now she was conservatively fashionable, and tidy despite her long journey. He remembered her with one chin, not two, and it was all a keen reminder of time's passage. In her case, time had dealt kindly.

"How have you been, Charles?" she said. "The last time we saw one another, you were a very young man."

Still bewildered, Madeline remembered her manners. "Won't you sit down, Virgilia?"

"Yes, thank you. I'm rather tired. I sat up on the train all the way from Washington." She removed her gloves. On the ring finger of her left hand she wore a diamond in a white gold setting.

Madeline cleared a few stacked books from a chair and gestured the visitor to it. Charles lighted a lamp while introducing Willa. Madeline seemed nervous, on the verge of crying. He presumed it was because Virgilia's arrival was one unexpected event too many. Emotions were strained in the whitewashed house. Pointless arguments had broken out several times during the past few days.

Virgilia said, "I'd like to stay a day or two, if you'll permit me. I'm here because George's attorney telegraphed me about Ashton. We must find some way to undo what she's done."

Madeline knotted her apron in her red-knuckled hands. "We have no room here, Virgilia. I'm afraid the best we can offer would be a pallet in the home of one of the freedmen."

"Perfectly adequate," Virgilia said. She radiated a crisp cordiality, and an air of city sophistication. Charles couldn't get over the change.

"Please don't think me rude" — Madeline cleared her throat — "but I just don't understand."

Virgilia rescued her from the embarrassing silence. "Why I am here after all that happened years ago? Very simple. Once I cared nothing for my family, or my brother's feelings. Now I care a great deal. I know George's high regard for you and Orry, and this place he enjoyed visiting so much. I had opinions that wouldn't allow me to enjoy Mont Royal. I offer no apology for them. I think they were correct, but that's past. I know George would help you financially if that would resolve matters in your favor. Since it won't, and he's still somewhere on the Atlantic, I'd like to help in some other way if I can. I've changed many of my opinions but not my opinion of Ashton. She always impressed me as a shallow, spiteful creature. Especially unkind to the black men and women her father owned."

"She hasn't changed much," Charles said. He raked a match on his boot sole and then puffed on his cigar. "I'm afraid it doesn't matter a damn what any one of us thinks. This place is hers. Come Friday, we have to get out or she'll have the law on us."

Virgilia's old militancy asserted itself. "That is a defeatist attitude."

"Well, if you've got reason for any other kind, you tell me," he snarled.

Madeline whispered, "Charles."

Virgilia's gentle gesture of dismissal said she wasn't offended. Willa said, "There's a bit of claret left. Perhaps our guest would like a glass while I fix some supper.".

None of them seemed to know what to say next. The uncomfortable silence went on and on, until Charles walked out. They heard him calling to his son.

On Thursday, Virgilia asked Charles to stroll down to the river with her. It was a steamy, sunless day, a perfect reflection of their spirits. Charles didn't want to go, but Willa said he must. To what purpose, he didn't know.

The sawmill had stopped work on Tuesday. Its employees awaited the pleasure of the new owner. On the mill dock by the smooth and placid Ashley, Virgilia walked among stacks of rough-cut cypress lumber.

"Charles, I know that for many years I wasn't very popular with the Mains, and justifiably so. I hope you believe I've changed."

Hands on hips, he gazed at the river. He shrugged to say it was a possibility, but only a possibility.

"All right, then. Do you think we might form an alliance?"

He scrutinized her. "We make a pretty unlikely pair."

"Granted."

"What kind of alliance?"

"One dedicated to defeating that vile woman."

"There isn't any way."

"I refuse to believe that, Charles."

Suddenly he laughed and relaxed. "I heard a lot of stories about you years ago, Miss Hazard —"

She touched the full sleeve of his loose cotton shirt. He noticed her hand —blunt-fingered, work-roughened. "Virgilia," she said.

"Well, all right, Virgilia. I guess if you take all the spite out of those stories, what's left is true. You're about as tough as one of my cavalry sergeants." Hastily then: "I mean that as a compliment."

"Of course," she said, with a wry smile. She was pensive a few moments. "We have twenty-four hours."

"I suppose I could shoot her, but I don't want to go to prison, and it wouldn't solve anything. The plantation would just go to this piano merchant she's apparently hitched up with." He sighed. "Wish I could put the calendar back a week or so. Before the sale I might have been able to scare her off. When I was a trader in the Indian Territory, I had a partner who taught me that fear was a powerful weapon."

Virgilia's interest was piqued. "Wait. Perhaps you've hit on something. Tell me about this partner of yours."

He described Wooden Foot Jackson and some of their experiences. Then he remembered the incident involving the false travois sign, which he described.

"Wooden Foot said fear was so powerful that it would trick you into seeing what you expected, instead of what was really there. I proved it. I saw a whole village in those tracks." He shrugged again. He could draw no practical conclusion from the story.

Surprisingly, it excited Virgilia. She whirled around at the edge of the pier. "What you expect instead of what's real — I find that very provocative, Charles. Now tell me more about Ashton. Naturally you've seen her —"

He nodded. "She's older, like all of us. Still dresses like a bird of paradise. I don't know what life's like in Chicago, but she must take good care of herself. She's still a beauty. No change there, either."

He found Virgilia staring with an intensity that puzzled him. She grasped his arm. "Will you go with me to Charleston this afternoon? I must find an apothecary."

He was astonished, but too polite to question her. A half hour later, alone with Willa, he said, "My God, did she fool me. She said she was here to help us. Instead, we have to chase down an apothecary. She's probably got some female complaint. I think she's crazy as ever."

On the drive to Charleston, Virgilia explained what she wanted from the apothecary's, and why she wanted it. At first Charles was speechless. Then, slowly, his desperation turned skepticism to an almost euphoric hope. Everything on one throw of the dice.

"It might work," he said when she came out of the shop. "There is a great likelihood that it will not," she said. "That's why we mustn't tell anyone ahead of time, and raise false hopes. Why are you smiling?"

"Thinking of my partner Wooden Foot. He'd like your grit."

"Thank you. Let's hope it isn't totally wasted."

She settled her skirt over her legs and clasped the reticule that held her purchase. Charles shook the reins over the mules and started the wagon toward home. He had no reason to whistle the little tune, but he did anyway.

69

The barouche raced up the lane much too fast. The top was in place to spare Ashton and Favor Herrington the dust of a swift journey from town. The two liveried black men hung on to the front seat, grinning like hunters closing on a fox. They didn't know much about what was happening at Mont Royal, but they'd quickly grasped that the white woman was haughty as a queen and tough as a general. They liked working for her.

Behind the barouche rattled a second carriage, less opulent. In this carriage rode two clerks employed by Herrington, and a jowly bailiff of the court who'd been bribed to come along.

As the barouche swayed to a standstill. Ashton felt her heartbeat quicken. She'd slept lightly, restlessly, and jumped out of bed while it was still dark to begin combing and arranging her hair. She was nervous as a virgin in the bridal bed; at least she supposed virgins felt this way. She hadn't been a virgin for so many years that it was impossible to recall.

This time Herrington had brought a big carpetbag, whose contents he fussily examined as the driver hopped down to open the door on Ashton's side. Great shinning lances of sun fell between the massive oaks at the head of the lane; the residue of a river mist was burning off. It was half past nine on what promised to be a sweltering June day.

Ashton's upper lip gleamed with perspiration. Her eyes were lively, and despite her state of nerves she could barely keep from smiling. She'd spent half an hour choosing her dress, finally selecting a three-thousand-dollar one from Worth's of Paris. It was rose pink, restrained and elegant. Her gloves and little straw hat were black. The black and rose made her powdered face starkly arresting.

Cousin Charles heard the carriages and walked around from the other side of the house in that lazy cat's way of his. He wore his old cavalry boots, a pair of white linen trousers turned yellow by time, and a shirt with the sleeves rolled above the elbows. His hair was still long as a gypsy's, and as usual he clenched a foul cigar in his teeth. Cousin Charles was no longer young, but exposure to Western weather had given his face the wrinkled toughness of someone much older. Ashton had always found him handsome. She would have found him so today if she didn't hate him worse than a snake because of his family ties.

"Good morning, dear Charles," she trilled. He leaned against one of the studs in the unfinished wall of the new house and stared. If looks were nails, she would be spiked to the barouche.

Insolent bastard, she thought. Herrington summoned his clerks from the second carriage. The bailiff belched and scratched his paunch. He strolled toward the corner of the whitewashed house next door. Charles snatched the cigar out of his mouth.

"Just a minute, you."

Favor Herrington stepped in front of him. "This gentleman can go anywhere he pleases, Mr. Main. He is an officer of the court, and he has the owner's permission. We brought him with us to forestall trouble. We realize this is not a happy day for you all."

The lawyer fairly oozed sympathy. Charles would have smashed him, but there were bigger fish to be hooked. Looking defeated, he said, "You won't need him."

"Good, very sensible," Herrington said, giving a nod to the bailiff. The paunchy man wandered out of sight, pulling at his crotch.

Ashton treated her lawyer to a brilliant smile. "Now, Favor, you know what's to be done. These two gentlemen are to visit every home on the plantation. Tell the niggers that all previous arrangements concerning their land are null and void unless they can show written proof of such arrangements, and can also read the terms aloud."

Herrington nodded crisply. To the pair of pale ciphers accompanying him he said, "Every 'cropper on this place henceforth owes a rental of twenty-five dollars per month, with two months in advance due and payable at five o'clock today. If they can't pay, they can sign one of those employment contracts I drew up. Or they can get out. I'll join you shortly. Get busy."

The clerks fetched portmanteaus from their carriage. Ashton pointed toward the road to the old slave quarters. "You'll find them scattered around down there." Charles folded his arms, high color blotching his dark cheeks.

"Now," Ashton said as the clerks hurried off, "the important business. Where might I find Madeline?"

"Around in front," Charles said with a jerk of his head.

"Thank you, you're so polite," she said with a sneer. She ought to take his sullen behavior as a tribute to her victory. Unfortunately, it just made her mad. She couldn't think when she was mad. She composed herself as best she could and swept down the side of the whitewashed house and stepped around to the lawn overlooking the river, only to be figuratively knocked flat by the sight of three women seated there, stiff as subjects in a photo gallery. One of the women was Virgilia Hazard.

"Virgilia, I'm floored. I'm positively floored."

"Hello, Ashton." Virgilia stood up. She was old, and heavy, and gray as a mouse in her drab dress. Ashton remembered Virgilia's past behavior. Her arrogant pronouncements about Southern ways and Southern people. Her lust for black men. The woman was an abomination; Ashton wanted to spit right in her face. But Mr. Herrington was standing beside her. He wouldn't approve.

"What a charming surprise," Ashton said. "Was your brother too busy to come? Did he send you down here to wring you hands in his behalf?"

The little blond tramp, Cousin Charles's companion, shot her a furious look. Madeline merely looked despondent. Virgilia said, "I regret that George is in Europe."

Ashton pursed her lips. "Oh, too bad."

"For God's sake," Madeline exclaimed, "let's load the wagon and get out of here."

"In a moment," Virgilia said. "There's something Charles and I would like to say to Ashton in private."

That startled the visitors. Down by the ruined dock, Ashton noted, Charles's ugly little boy was chasing geese again. She studied Virgilia, her expression opaque, searching for some sign of a hidden intent. She could detect none.

"I can't imagine we've anything substantial to discuss," she said. "Mont Royal's mine, and that's that."

"Yes, true enough. But we would still like to speak with you."

Ashton tilted her head and blinked prettily. "What do you think, Favor?"

"I see no purpose, but I see no harm in it."

"Well, then, all right."

"While you're busy, I'll join my clerks, if you don't mind."

"Yes, you just go right on ahead," Ashton trilled. Charles threw a swift look at Willa; he seemed to be signaling her in some conspiratorial way. Neither Ashton nor her lawyer paid attention.

Virgilia gathered her dowdy gray skirt in her left hand, which Ashton noticed for the first time. "Let's step inside. We'll only be a moment."

Ashton's sense of triumph puffed her up again. She could afford to be generous to these whipped curs. She was smiling radiantly as she stepped in front of Virgilia without apology and preceded her into the cheap little room that served as Madeline's parlor.

Everything was packed and piled near the door except for one handmade shelf holding a small stoppered apothecary's bottle of dark amber glass. Dim light fell through the curtained window in the stove alcove. Charles followed the women inside. He closed the door and leaned against it, with arms folded. His cigar had gone out but it still reeked.

Ashton's smile wavered and faded away; although there was absolutely no way these people could threaten her any longer, she was nervous. She cleared her throat and said to Virgilia, "My dear, is that an engagement ring?"

"Yes, it is."

"Very handsome. Congratulations. I should like to meet the gentleman." What her tone tried to convey was, I should like to meet the man desperate enough to marry an ox like you.

Virgilia seemed to catch that. "I don't really think you would. He's a colored man."

Ashton could have gone all the way through the ground to China. Even Charles looked thunderstruck. Ashton began to feel annoyed and genuinely upset by this queer confrontation in the dark bare room. "Well, that certainly is a piece of news. I wonder, could we just get on with this?"

"Immediately," Virgilia said, "Charles and I would like you to sign something, that's all."

Ashton tittered. "Sign? For mercy's sake, what are you talking about?"

Virgilia picked up the reticule lying on a crate. From it she drew a single sheet of stiff paper, folded twice. She unfolded it. "This. There's a pen in one of these boxes. It will only take a moment."

"What is it? What the hell are you talking about?" She was angry over the mummery.

"A very simple legal document," Virgilia said. "It transfers the title to Mont Royal to Hazard's of Pennsylvania, for a dollar and other considerations."

That was even more shocking than the news about Virgilia's intended. Ashton's mouth opened, and her eyes widened. She gaped at them as if they were crazy people. She abandoned all pretense of politeness:

"You Yankee bitch. You fat whore. What are you thinking? Have you drunk yourself into a state?"

"I suggest you calm down, Cousin," Charles said behind her.

"You shut your mouth, you goddamn good-for-nothing. You're both ready for the asylum. There's no consideration on God's earth that could make me sign that, and you're lint-headed fools even to think it."

"Perhaps this consideration would influence you," Virgilia said. From the shelf she took the amber bottle. She showed it, stoppered, in her open palm.

Ashton's squeal went right up the scale. "Oh, what a fool you are — an idiot! A complete ninny! I always thought you were a crazy woman, now I'm sure. Get that out of my sight, whatever it is. Charles, you open the door."

She stormed toward him, only to stop abruptly when he stayed put, arms still folded. He frightened her.

"Do you think" — Ashton's voice quavered just a little — "do you think some shabby little gift would do anything, anything at all, to influence me? Mont Royal's mine, and I'm taking it."

"Gift?" Virgilia repeated with a puzzled smile. The smile disappeared as though a curtain had come down. "For the likes of you?" Ashton felt a distinct chill. What in God's name were they up to? "Stand fast, Charles. Don't let her out."

Ashton's heaving bodice showed her agitation. She seemed to lose an inch or so of height. Her black-gloved hands fisted at her waist. "What's going on here? What is that bottle?"

Virgilia drew out the stopper. "It's something for your face, but it isn't perfume." She held out the bottle. "Oil of vitriol."

Charles said, "Sulfuric acid."

Ashton screamed.

It didn't disturb Virgilia. "Go ahead, yell. That feeble lawyer of yours has gone off to find his helpers. If he hadn't, Willa was prepared to lure him away. You'll have witnesses to support anything you say about this conversation."

Ashton held still, trembling. From the corner of her eye, she gauged the distance to Charles. A fly buzzed near Virgilia's forehead. Ashton clenched her fists and cried, "Favor!"

Silence. Virgilia smiled in a dreamy way. "My dear, it's no use. Even if he were standing right outside and tried to force the door, I'd still have plenty of time to splash this all over you." The smile grew broader. "You know I wouldn't hesitate. I'm a Yankee who hates you and your kind and I'm crazy to boot. So I suggest you sign. There's an old quill and some ink in that box right beside you."

"A paper like that — it's no good," Ashton raved. "I can take it to court. I can take you to court. I only have to say that you forced me —"

"Why, there's no duress," Charles said gently. "I'm a witness. There are two of us to testify that you signed voluntarily. Where are your witnesses to say otherwise?"

"Damn you. Damn you!" .

"Ashton, you're wasting your energy for nothing," Virgilia said. "This paper is perfectly legal, and it will be legal after you sign it. We can hire the best lawyers in the nation to guarantee it. As many lawyers as it takes. My brother George can easily afford that, and a lot more. So be sensible. Sign."

Ashton screamed again.

Virgilia sighed. "Charles, I'm afraid we miscalculated. Her appearance isn't important to her any more."

"Her face, you mean —"

"Yes. Her face."

Virgilia held out the open amber bottle and started walking toward Ashton. Ashton pressed her wrists to her temples and screamed for a full five seconds. Then she sagged to her knees, rooting in the box. "I'll sign. Don't hurt my face. I'll sign it. Here, I'm signing it —"

She spilled the vial of ink as she dipped the quill in. Huge black spots spread on the rose pink bodice and skirt from Worth's. Spots of ink fell like black tears on the margin of the paper she didn't bother to read. She flung it on top of a stack of books for support, then signed her name.

"There, goddamn you. There." Tears coursed down her face. Her hand was shaking visibly as she thrust the paper at Virgilia.

Virgilia took it and examined the signature. Ashton tottered to her feet, sweaty, pale, breathing noisily. She dropped the quill. It bounced off her skirt, leaving another stain. The vial of ink lay on its side on the floor, gurgling as it emptied itself into a black pool.

Virgilia nodded and raked her cheeks with her nails, screaming like a harpy. "You Yankee bitch!" Her nails drew blood. "You've destroyed me!"

"With a little well water? I hardly think so. Let her out, Charles."

He stood back and opened the door. Sunlight spilled in, lighting the pool of ink. Outside, he saw Madeline and Willa, both anxiously watching the doorway. Farther down the lawn, Gus pointed out something on the river for the paunchy bailiff.

"Goodbye, Ashton," he said.

She screamed as she ran past.

The barouche went down the lane even faster than it had come up, taking Ashton away. The clerks and Favor Harrington, Esquire, showed up an hour later. The bailiff had already taken the other carriage. The bewildered lawyer and his clerks had to walk back to Charleston.

70

Rain at dawn yielded to sunlight through the clouds. Special passenger trains from downtown Philadelphia pulled into the new Pennsylvania platform one after another, disgorging crowds.

Spectators, with umbrellas, flowed through the main gates beginning at nine. They found imposing buildings — Machinery Hall and Main Hall side by side — and, beyond, avenues and paths, fountains and monuments, beautiful and colossal. There were halls of agriculture and horticulture; a hall of the U.S. government; and another devoted solely to women's crafts and domestic activities. There were campgrounds for visiting Bedouins and for Army demonstration units. There were massive flower beds, and reflecting pools. There were statues representing Columbus, religious liberty, and Moses striking the rock for water. There were also, by design, many, comfort stations, popcorn stands, and restaurants — French, German, Japanese, Tunisian, and more.

Four thousand people quickly filled the special stands in front of Memorial Hall, which was granite and had a great glass dome surmounted by Columbia with arms outstretched. Inside were more than thirty-two hundred paintings, more than six hundred sculptures, and, in a separate building, something completely new: an exhibit of more than twenty-eight hundred photographs.

A symphony orchestra played anthems of the sixteen nations represented. Since the host country had no official anthem, the orchestra played "Hail, Columbia."

At 10:30, drums and cornets announced President and Mrs. Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro II and the Empress Theresa of Brazil. No reigning monarchs had ever before visited the United States. A huge military escort of soldiers, sailors, and marines marched them to the platform.

The orchestra played the "Centennial Inauguration March," a new piece composed by Wagner. After a prayer, a hymn, a cantata, and presentation of the buildings, the President spoke:

Grant finished at twelve. Accompanied by an organ, eight hundred choristers sang Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus." Bells began to peal. From a hill overlooking Fairmout Park, artillery fired a hundred-gun salute.

Marshals organized the U.S. and foreign dignitaries into a long procession. Rank on rank, the notables proceeded along the walkways to Machinery Hall.

In the Hall, President Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro climbed the iron stairs of the dual-cylinder wonder and showpiece of the exhibition, the Centennial Engine. Twenty boilers in another building powered the fifty-six-ton flywheel and the twenty-seven-foot walking beams of the fourteen-hundred-horse-power engine. George Corliss of Providence demonstrated one of the two silver-plated cranks that would start the engine. Below, among his fellow commissioners, George Hazard gazed blankly at the mammoth machine. He could not quite believe the moment had arrived after so many months of struggle and doubt. He was gratified, exhausted, lonely in the vast crowd. Dom Pedro turned his crank. President Grant turned his. The great walking beams began to shunt up and down. A thrill of response, a wordless exclamation like a rushing wind, rose around George, and then he began to hear the other machines in the hall. Turning, cranking, thumping — all driven by the Corliss engine, by U.S. industrial might.

George wrote:

"When I first saw Los Angeles three years ago," Billy said, "it wasn't much besides unpaved streets and some old adobe houses. Now we're tearing up the whole place and building hotels, warehouses, churches. The town's going to boom. We'll be sixty thousand instead of six thousand soon. I've banked my family's future on it."

His listener, a Unitarian minister from Boston, clutched his hat to keep the sea breeze from snatching it. The little excursion steamer was just putting out from the pier at Santa Monica, bound up the coast to Santa Barbara. It was a perfect morning, with some whitecaps showing on the Pacific.

"You are a civil engineer, you told me —"

"By training." Billy was forty-one now, and as he grew more portly, he resembled his brother George more strongly. His side-whiskers were tipped with gray. He wore an expensive suit. "I actually spend more time developing and selling building lots."

"Many customers yet?"

"No, but it's the future I'm counting on." He leaned on the rail, enthusiasm crinkling the corners of his eyes. "The transcontinental line brought seventy thousand visitors and newcomers last year. It's only the beginning. We have everything, you see. Room for new cities. Magnificent scenery. Healthful air. A temperate climate. I grew up in Pennsylvania. I dream of the snow sometimes, but I don't miss it."

Brett came along the deck, stouter now, holding their youngest, two-year-old Alfred, securely by the hand. Billy introduced Brett to the cleric, who asked, "Is this handsome lad your only child?"

She laughed. "Oh, no. We have four girls and two other boys. Our oldest son's eleven. He's taking care of the others in our cabins."

"And you're all going to Philadelphia by train?" The cleric was amazed.

"Yes," Billy said, "after we travel up the coast and show the children the sights. We'll have one of the Concord coaches all to ourselves, I expect."

"You must be very happy to be going home," the visitor said.

Billy smiled. "I'll be pleased to see my family after so many years. But California's our home."

Brett slipped her arm in his and followed his gaze back past the pier and the shore and up to the bluish mountains. The tiny steamer's whistle momentarily scattered the gulls swooping in her wake over the bright sea.

George read Scientific American for a while. He sat in a plush chair in the writing room of the Pennsylvania Building, which faced Fountain Avenue, one of the two main promenades crossing the exhibition grounds. The building, an outrageously ornamented Gothic cottage, was the work of young Schwarzmann, the Bavarian engineer who'd surveyed and platted the grounds and designed several of the major buildings. Since Pennsylvania was the official host, the cottage naturally emerged as the largest of the twenty-four state-sponsored buildings. Objectively, George knew it was a horror. The people of Philadelphia were terrified that it would remain in Fairmout Park permanently. Still, considered as part of the whole exhibition scheme, it was something for a citizen of Lehigh Station to be proud of, and he was.

It had been a busy year for George; a busy three or four years as far as the exhibition was concerned. He was one of the seven vice presidents of the private Centennial Commission, and a member of its Board of Finance. He'd helped raise a million dollars in state funds to underwrite the mammoth exposition. And when funding lagged, he'd spent weeks in Washington lobbying for a congressional appropriation. He'd worked hard on behalf of the Franco-American Union, too, helping to bring part of Bartholdi's planned monument to the exhibition grounds. The statue was to be erected on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor, if it was ever finished. But as George had predicted to the journalist Levie, the mood of the times was conservative, and even an outright gift from the French was suspect.

George had lately returned from Cincinnati. There he and his friend Carl Schurz and some like-minded Republicans had succeeded in blocking the presidential nomination of Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, who was evidently involved in some insider stock trading that was connected with the Union Pacific. The last thing the Republicans needed after the scandals generated by members of Grant's administration was a tainted presidential candidate. George and his associates had gotten Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio to be the party's standard-bearer.

He was proud of the Hayes nomination, just as he was proud of the exhibition — two hundred forty-nine large and small buildings on two hundred eighty-four acres of parkland along the Schuylkill River. He was particularly proud that so many foreign nations had decided to exhibit. It validated the country's claim to be a new industrial giant. He liked to walk the aisle of Machinery Hall where Hazard's displayed locomotive boilers, railroad track, and ornamental iron. In the artillery display outside the government building, Hazard's was represented by two of the smoothbore coastal defense guns cast by the Rodman method during the war. Though less impressive than Friedrich Krupp's enormous thirteen-incher, dubbed "Krupp's Killing Machine," the Hazard pieces were contributions to the Union war effort in which George took pride.

The words of the Scientific American article blurred suddenly. Quite without wanting to, he saw the sham of all his activity. The work he did was worthwhile, he'd never for a minute deny that. But it was a substitute for home and family. He was a lonesome man, and he had been ever since Constance died. He hated the silences at Belvedere. He hated his bed on a cold January night. His children's growing up only aggravated the loneliness. He was a dervish in politics and civic work, so that he wouldn't have to stop and think about what his life had become. But he seemed to remember anyway.

He heard noise in the foyer. Today's exhibit there was yet another Liberty Bell, this one from Harrisburg, a yard high, entirely of sugar. From behind the bell, Stanley stepped into sight.

Stanley would this fall stand for reelection, unopposed, as United States representative from Lehigh Station. It would be his third term. Stanley was quite heavy now, and florid, but he carried himself with the air of power that soon mantled those who went to Washington. With him, munching popcorn from a bag bought at one of the stands on the Avenue, was his ferretlike son Laban.

George laid the tabloid paper aside and strode over to shake his brother's hand. It was half past noon on Friday, the last day of June.

"The train was late," Stanley said, offering no apology.

"They'll hold my reservation," George said, "I haven't seen you in a while, Laban. How are you?"

"Prospering," said the young lawyer with a smirk.

Stanley brushed at his side-whiskers. "Where are we taking dinner?"

"Lauber's," George said as they walked out into the crowds. Far to the left, at the end of Fountain Avenue, a whistle hooted and a train shunted by on the narrow-gauge sightseeing railroad that made a circuit of the grounds every five minutes, for five cents.

As they stepped around a couple of burly Centennial Guards who were hustling a drunk toward the gate, George surveyed the crowds with satisfaction. "We had more than thirty-five thousand paid admission yesterday." For a while, after the crush on opening day, admissions had limped along at little better than twelve thousand each day.

"It will still lose money," Stanley said.

That was true. The commissioners had lost their war with Philadelphia's preachers, who insisted that opening the exhibition on Sundays would desecrate the Sabbath. Although most Americans worked six days a week, they were unable to visit the exhibition on their day off.

"Well, we wouldn't be here at all if the House hadn't passed that million and a half in special appropriations," George said. "I'll always be grateful for your support there."

"Think nothing of it," said Congressman Hazard, who lately had begun to act like what he was, an older brother, George smiled, but Stanley didn't notice.

"When do the others pull in?" Laban asked as he tossed his empty popcorn bag on the ground.

"William and Patricia and their families are already here," George said. "They'll be joining us at the German restaurant. The next group should arrive this evening. Orry's cousin Charles, all the way from Texas."

At that same hour, a train from New York carried Colonel Charles Main, his wife, Willa, and their twelve-year-old son, Augustus, toward Philadelphia. "Colonel" was an honorary title given Charles by his neighbors when they perceived that he was growing rich and therefore becoming important.

Charles still wore his hair long, and he dressed like what he was, a prosperous rancher, in tooled boots, a creamy white hat with broad brim, and a flowing neckerchief instead of a cravat. He owned fifty-five thousand acres a half-day's ride west of Fort Worth and was negotiating to double that. His cowboys drove a huge herd to Kansas every summer. His ranch was named Main Chance; his horse Satan was enjoying a comfortable retirement there. He also owned several large blocks of Fort Worth real estate, and the opulent Parker Opera House, which was less than a year old.

As the train chugged through the farmlands of New Jersey, Charles read a book with the aid of a pair of spectacles. His son, who still bore a long, thin scar on his right cheek, was a solemn, dark-eyed boy, already growing tall and muscular, like his father. Willa loved him like her own, something of a necessity since she'd never been able to conceive a child, much as they wanted that.

Charles laughed without humor. The book was My Life on the Plains, published two years ago. He hadn't had time to read it until now.

"I didn't know it was a humorous book," Willa said. Gus gazed out the sooty window at some rusty-colored cattle in a dairy shed.

"No, it isn't," Charles said. "But it's damn cleverly done. I mean, the bones are there. What's missing is the meat. The bloody meat. For instance, Custer calls one of the Cheyenne children we killed at the Washita a 'dusky little chieftain,' and 'a plucky spirit.'" He put in his leather marker and closed the book. "He's poured on flowing phrases like disinfectant. It was a massacre."

"Which doesn't seem to have harmed the book's popularity."

"Nor the General's reputation, either," Charles said with disgust.

George's son William III and his son's wife, Polly, walked up the steps of Lauber's Restaurant a moment ahead of George and Stanley. William wore good Methodist black. He was twenty-seven now, in the third year of his pastorate at a small church in the town of Xenia, Ohio. Although Constance had raised him a Roman Catholic, he'd met Polly Wharton, whose father was a Methodist bishop, when he was twenty-one, and she had single-handedly won him as a husband and a member of her denomination. She had taught school to support them while he attended a seminary.

They had no children, but Patricia and her husband and their three, all under six years old, more than made up for the lack with noise and chatter at the round restaurant table. Patricia lived in Titusville. Her husband, Fremont Nevin, edited and published the Titusville Independent. George liked the tall, thoughtful émigré from Texas, even though he was a Democrat. The couple's children were Constance Anne, who was the youngest, Fremont Junior, and George Hazard Nevin. Growing up among the Titusville derricks, little George Hazard was already saying he wanted to be an oil man.

"Be sure you keep track of how many times you pay fifty cents at the gate, so I can reimburse you," George said to the adults after they were seated.

"What about Grandfather Flynn, Papa?" Patricia asked him.

"I had a very gracious message from him after Filly transmitted the invitation. He's quite old now, and he didn't feel up to making the long trip from Los Angeles. He said he would be with us in spirit. I gather he still handles a few cases that interest him. A remarkable person — like his daughter," he finished with an odd little catch in his throat.

Nevin, whose nickname was Champ, lit a cigarette and said to Stanley: "We're going to whip Hayes in November, you know. Governor Tilden is a strong candidate."

"I came here to eat, not to discuss politics, if you don't mind," Stanley said with ruffled dignity. George signaled the waiter. Laban rearranged his napkin in his lap for the third time. He didn't enter into the conversation. He didn't like any of the others in the family.

"We have a one-bedroom suite reserved," said the clerk at the luxurious Continental Hotel at Chestnut and Ninth Streets. The lobby was bedlam, the noise level heightened by two gentlemen shouting about their nonexistent reservations.

The clerk raised his voice too. "Shall we put a cot in the sitting room for your servant?"

Standing behind Madeline, Jane looked aggrieved, but she was too tired to fight. It had been a long journey from Mont Royal. Madeline was dusty and cross and not inclined to show a similar restraint. "She isn't my servant, she's my friend and traveling companion. She needs a bed like mine."

"We have no other accommodations," the clerk said. Another clerk, to his left, leaped back as one of the men with no reservation took a swing at him. The second clerk yelled for help from the office.

"Then we'll sleep together," Madeline said, almost shouting to make herself heard. "Have our luggage taken upstairs."

"Bellman," the clerk said, snapping his fingers. He looked outraged.

Patricia said, "Fremont, don't play with your knackwurst." Fremont Junior speared it with his fork and flung it on the floor. Patricia smacked his knuckles.

Her husband said to George: "How many of the Mains from South Carolina will be joining us?"

George put down his stein of Centennial Bock Bier and shook his head.

"Only Orry's widow, I regret to say. Orry's niece Marie-Louise is having her second child in August. Her doctor advised her not to travel. As for her father, Orry's brother —" he drew a breath, his face grave. "After a good deal of thought, and despite the slight to his wife, who's a lovely person, I declined to send an invitation to Cooper. He made it clear long ago that he was a Main in name only. Like Ashton. I never had any intention of trying to locate her."

Judge Cork Bledsoe, three years retired from the state circuit, kept a small farm near the seacoast, ten miles south of Charleston. On a hot July morning, seven men riding single file turned into his lane to pay a call. They were not Klansmen; nothing concealed their faces. The only garments they wore in common were heavy red flannel shirts.

No one knew exactly why red had been adopted by loyal Democrats for their mounted rifle clubs; the custom had gotten started a few months ago, up around Aiken and Edgefield and Hamburg, along the Savannah River, where resistance to Republicans and blacks was perhaps the most savage in the state.

Cooper rode third in line. He'd tied a large white kerchief around his scrawny neck to sop up sweat, but it didn't help much. From his saddle scabbard jutted the polished stock of the very latest Winchester big-bore, Model 1876 — the "Centennial." It fired a 350-grain bullet heavy enough to stop a stampeding buffalo. Lately Cooper had acquired a taste for firearms, something he'd never had before.

Judith objected to her husband's keeping such a weapon at Tradd Street. She also disliked his new friends, and their activities. It made no difference to him; he no longer cared what she thought. They shared the same house but he displayed little affection toward her; their communication was minimal.

He considered the work of this group and similar ones throughout the state to be crucial. Only a government of dedicated white men could redeem South Carolina and put the social order right.

A dowdy woman with gray hair and bowed shoulders watched the horsemen ride into the dooryard and arrange themselves in a semicircle in front of the house. The woman had been pruning some of her roses; there were dozens of them, pink, dusty red, peach, fuming the air with their sweetness.

The spokesman for the callers, the lawyer Favor Herrington, touched the brim of his planter's hat. "Good day, Leota."

"Good day, Favor." She acknowledged three others by name; Cooper was one. She didn't miss the rifle or shotgun each man carried on his saddle.

Herrington plucked his sticky shirt away from his chest. "Scorcher, isn't it? I wonder if I might have a word with the Judge? Tell him some of his friends from the Calhoun Saber Club are here."

Leota Bledsoe hurried into the house. Moments later, shirt cuffs rolled up and his hot-looking black wool vest hanging open, the judge shuffled out in his carpet slippers. He was a slight man with mild brown eyes. He had shares in several of the larger phosphate processing plants near the city.

''To what do I owe the pleasure of a visit by such a distinguished group from the political opposition?" he said with a certain sarcasm.

Herrington chuckled. "You know we're Democrats, Judge, but I hope you recognize that we're Straightouts, and not damn Co-operationists who want to crawl in bed with the damn Republicans."

"With those red shirts I could hardly make a mistake," the Judge said heavily. All that spring there had been a fierce struggle between those who wanted to keep the Democratic Party pure and those who wanted to strengthen it by means of a coalition with some of the less obnoxious Republicans, such as Governor D. H. Chamberlain. Cooper and Straightouts like him were now resorting to some unusual methods to strengthen the party. Red-shirt rifle clubs. Visits such as this one. Public meetings; even some useful, if bloody, rioting. The last day or two, he'd heard, darkies and white men from both sides of the river had been knocking heads up in Hamburg.

"We want to discuss the nominating convention in Columbia next month," Herrington said.

That irritated the Judge. "Blast it, boys, don't you waste my time. Everyone knows I've voted Republican six years running."

"Yes, Judge, we know," Cooper said. "Perhaps that was in the best interests of your business." Casually, he laid a hand on the stock of the Centennial Winchester. "We don't believe that it's in the best interests of the state."

"See here, I'm not going to discuss my politics with a bunch of bullies who ride around selling their opinions with rifles."

"These rifles are for defense only," another of the Red Shirts said.

"Defense!" The Judge snorted. "You use those guns to frighten honest black men who only want the franchise, which is their Constitutional right. I know what this is, it's the Mississippi scheme. It cleaned all the Republicans and nigras out of state office over there last year, and now you're trying the same plan here. Well, I'm not interested."

He turned and shuffled back toward his front door.

"Judge, just a minute." Favor Herrington no longer sounded cordial. In the rose-scented shadows, the Judge blinked at the armed riders.

"I don't deny what you say," Herrington continued. "Yes, we are encouraging the niggers either to change their vote or to stay away from the polls in November. We are going to turn the Republican majority in this state into a Democratic one. We're going to nominate a Straightout ticket next month, starting with General Hampton at the top, and we're going to redeem South Carolina from the carpetbaggers and mongrel legislators who are dragging her to shame and ruin. Now" — he swabbed his shiny face with a blue bandanna — "to make that plan work, we must also convert erring Republicans to Democrats once again."

"Bulldoze them, that's what you mean," the Judge snapped. "At gunpoint."

"No, sir, Judge, nothing like that. We ask only that you do what's right for the state. We ask it politely and respectfully."

"Balderdash," the old man said.

Herrington raised his voice. "All your Republican brethren are doing it, Judge. It's a simple thing. Just change over. Cross Jordan."

"Cross Jordan, is that what you call it? I'd sooner cross the Styx into hell."

A couple of the Calhoun Saber Club members started to draw their rifles. In the house, the Judge's wife called a muffled warning. The dooryard grew very still in the heat. One of the horses dropped reeking dung. Herrington cued Cooper with a sideways glance.

Cooper tried to sound reasonable. "We are in earnest, Judge Bledsoe. You mustn't take us lightly. You have a family to think about, many grandchildren. Wouldn't you prefer respectability to ostracism? If not for yourself, then for them?"

"Up in Charleston," Herrington added, "there are a lot of hooligans roaming the streets. Sometimes decent folk aren't safe. Especially girls of a tender age. You have two such granddaughters in Charleston, don't you, sir?"

"By God, sir, are you threatening me?" the Judge cried.

"No, sir," Cooper said with a sober expression. "All we want is your pledge to cross Jordan. To support Governor Hampton when we nominate him in Columbia. To tell others of your decision."

"You boys go to hell, and take your rifles with you," Judge Cork Bledsoe said. "This isn't Mississippi."

"I'm sorry that's your decision," Favor Herrington said with cold fury. "Come on, fellows."

They rode one by one from the sweet-smelling dooryard. Judge Bledsoe stayed on the porch, glaring, until the last rider disappeared up the Charleston pike.

Herrington dropped back to walk his horse beside Cooper's. "You know the next name on the list."

"I know. I'm not going to have anything to do with it. He's my son-in-law."

"We don't expect you to take part, Cooper. You're excused from dealing with Mr. German. But we're going to call on him."

Cooper wiped his sweaty mouth with his long fingers. Softly, he said, "Do what you must."

Two nights later, unknown persons fired three rounds through the window of Bledsoe's house. At church the following Sunday, old friends in the congregation refused to speak to the Judge or his wife. On Tuesday, as their fifteen-year-old granddaughter and her governess strolled home on King Street at dusk, two young white men dashed from an alley, snatched the girl's reticule, and threatened her with knives. One slashed the sleeve of her dress before they ran off. At the end of the week Judge Cork Bledsoe announced his intention to cross Jordan.

"We won't be needing the suite," Virgilia said. "We have a reservation elsewhere."

The clerk at the Continental, the same one who had registered Madeline and Jane, was dubious. "Whatever you say, Mrs. Brown. I hope you're certain of your accommodations. I know of nothing to be had, not even hall space, in any of the good hotels."

"We'll be fine," Virgilia said. She left the noisy lobby and got into the hack waiting at the curb. Elegantly dressed in an overcoat with velvet lapels and pearl-gray gloves, Scipio regarded his wife with mild displeasure.

"Why did you do that?"

She kissed his cheek. "Because it isn't worth the fight, darling. I want to stay where we won't be treated rudely and stared at constantly. We'll have enough of it when we're with the family." She noted his frown and squeezed his hand. "Please. You know I'll always go to the barricades if it's important. This isn't important. Let's enjoy ourselves."

"Where do you want to go now?" the driver called down. He didn't hide his unhappiness about carrying a black man and a white woman, however much he made from it.

"To the Negro district," Virgilia replied. The driver made a face and drove away.

"Bison?"

"Bunk, by God!" Charles whooped and dashed forward to his friend just coming down the marble stairs. People in the lobby stared at the lanky man in frontier costume bear-hugging the proper little fellow in a business suit. Questions and answers tumbled one over another.

"You brought Brett and the youngsters?"

"Yes. They're upstairs. Where's your wife? I'm eager to meet her."

"Conferring with the head porter about train schedules. She wants to go to New York to see an old friend."

They went to the saloon bar. Each studied the other, noting many changes. And although they spoke with enthusiasm and warmth, each felt a little shy of the other; it had been a long time since their postwar reunion at Mont Royal.

Children seemed a bridge over the years. "I'm hoping for an Academy appointment for my oldest son if my brother Stanley can stay in Congress three more terms. Isn't your boy about the same age as G. W.? They could start together, just the way we did."

Soberly, Charles said, "I'm not sure I want Gus to be a soldier."

"He wouldn't have to stay in forever. And it's always been the finest education offered in America."

Charles's eyes seemed to drift away, past the layered smoke and the gaslights, past the noisy regulars and the visitors at the long oak bar, to some distant time, some distant place beside a river in the Indian Territory.

"I'm still not sure," he said.

Willa found America's Ace of Players in a dirty Mulberry Street rooming house that was almost a tenement. She knocked twice, got no answer, opened the door, and saw him seated in a rocker, staring out a grimy rain-washed window. The view was a wall. He didn't turn when she closed the door. He must be going deaf.

The sight of the small room crowded with old trunks, piles of wardrobe items, and clipping books broke her heart. Above the door he'd hung a horseshoe. The chrysanthemum in his lapel was wilted and brown. A black cat in his lap arched and hissed at her. That made him turn.

"Willa, my child. I'd no idea you'd be here today." Her telegram had stated both the exact date and the probable hour of her arrival. "Please, come in."

When he stood, she noticed his swollen, misshapen knuckles. The contrast between his wrinkled skin and ludicrous dyed hair was sad. She hugged him lovingly. "How are you, Sam?"

"Never better. Never better! For a man sixty years old, I am fit as a young bachelor." She knew he was seventy-five. "Come sit down and let me share my exciting news. Any day now, I have it on good authority, none other than Mr. Joe Jefferson is going to ask me to step in for two weeks and play Rip Van Winkle while he enjoys a seaside holiday. The part is around here somewhere. I've been studying."

Under the rocker, next to a glass of water and a bowl of cold oats, he found an old side, from which he blew dust. Willa swallowed, congratulated him, and visited with him for the next two hours. He was dozing in the chair when she stole out. One of Trump's crippled hands rested motionless on the head of his purring cat.

Before she left the building, she located the woman who owned it and paid her fifty dollars, twice the amount she mailed from Texas every month, secretly, for Sam Trump's board and room.

On Monday, they all set out to visit the exhibition. George provided a carriage for each group, two for Billy and Brett's family, and the vehicles took them swiftly and elegantly past crowded horsecars and Pennsylvania short-line trains to the carriage park on the grounds.

They saw exhibits of Pratt and Whitney's metalworking tools, Western Electric's railway signal devices, Ebenezer Butterick's paper dress patterns, Gorham silver, Haviland and Doulton stoneware, LaFrance fire engines, Seth Thomas clocks, McKesson and Robbins medicinal roots and barks, Pfizer chemicals, Steinway and Chickering and Knabe and Fenway pianos. They saw locomotives, underwater cable equipment, tall glass cylinders containing dirt from various counties in Iowa, giant bottles of Rhine River wine on pedestals, portable boilers, wallpaper printing presses, glass blowers, Gatling guns, Mr. Graham Bell's curious talking device called the "telephone" (George thought it impractical and silly), huge polished reflectors from the Light House Board, fifteen-inch ears of corn and seven-foot stalks of wheat, bentwood furniture, sculptures in butter, Swedish ornamental iron, Russian furs, Japanese lacquered screens, Army, Navy, and Marine uniforms of the last seventy-five years, the innovative new European school for young children called the "Kindergarten," thriving orange, palm, and lemon trees in Horticultural Hall, Tiffany's twenty-seven-diamond necklace worth more than eighty thousand dollars in gold, exhibit cases containing crackers, stuffed birds, blank books, mineral samples, carriage wheels, bolts and nuts, corsets and false teeth, a seventeen-foot-high crystal fountain hung with cut glass prisms and gas-lit for added brilliance, a plaster sculpture of George Washington, legless, perched on a life-size eagle (Madeline covered her mouth and rolled her eyes), and five thousand models of inventions from the Patent Office.

They drank soda water from stands on the avenue and coffee at the Brazilian Coffee House. Stanley liked the French food at Aux Trois Freres Provengaux because it was so expensive. Brett liked the new way all the furniture was exhibited in realistic arrangements called "room settings." Virgilia liked the Women's Pavilion, and especially the newspaper office in the center, where women at desks wrote articles and other women set type and still others printed a newspaper called the New Century for Women; she took two copies. The young boys liked Old Abe, the pet bald eagle of a Wisconsin Civil War regiment; Abe was a veteran of more than thirty battles, and for long periods he sat so still on his perch he looked stuffed, but once, after a lengthy wait, he spread his great wings and turned his fierce eye on the boys, who were thrilled. George liked the round four-inch bronze medal with a female figure holding a laurel wreath which Hazard's had received for its ornamental iron; the Centennial judges awarded twelve thousand such medals for outstanding exhibits. Madeline liked the Mississippi state cabin because it was decorated with Santa Cruz Railroad and the mammoth grapevine shipped all the way from California and erected on a great overhead trellis; visitors strolled beneath the living vine. Charles didn't like the display of Indian tipis, pipes, pots, costumes, and other artifacts assembled by the Smithsonian Institution, but he said nothing about his feelings, merely passed quickly through the exhibit with a grave expression. George frequently said things like, "It's the beginning of a new age," or, "And the skeptics say we have nothing worth showing to foreign powers," but everyone was so interested in what they saw, they didn't comment or even hear him most of the time.

Brett's daughters Maude and Luci could hardly be pried away from the Nevins's tiny Constance Anne. Everyone kept mixing up G. W. Hazard and George Hazard Nevin, whom his parents called G. H. Willa, who always spoiled Gus, bought him too much popcorn and he got a bellyache and had to rest an hour at a comfort station. Fremont Junior got lost for ten minutes near the Otis Brothers steam elevator exhibit in Machinery Hall. Brett's youngest girl, Melody, just three and a half, pulled tulips from a bed outside Horticultural Hall before her mother stopped her and spanked her. A couple of oafish white men accosted Virgilia and Scipio, and he started swinging. Centennial Guards swooped in and broke up the clumsy flight. They gave the mixed couple no sympathy. Stanley and Laban, though still in Philadelphia, were nowhere to be seen. Nearly every exhibit that Billy passed inspired some comment about California. Everything was better there, more healthful there, more modern there. To Virgilia, her brother sounded like an abolitionist whose new cause was mammon. Scipio quietly suggested she curb her criticism for the sake of family harmony. George offered his arm to Madeline and with great interest listened to her describe the new house and Mont Royal. He promised everyone that there would be spectacular fireworks the next evening, the fourth.

That same evening, Charles and Willa left Gus with the Billy Hazards. Virgilia and Scipio came to the hotel at half past six — no one was: quite sure where they were staying, but no one pressed them — and the two couples took a cab to Maison de Paris, a well-recommended restaurant where Charles had reserved a table. He was the evening's host. Ever since 1869, he'd explained to his wife, he had felt a special indebtedness to Virgilia.

At the restaurant, the suave maitre d' drew Charles aside and spoke to him. Charles explained that Scipio Brown was Virgilia's husband.

"I do not care if he is the emperor of Ethiopia," the maitre d' whispered in poor English. "We do not seat persons of his color."

Charles smiled and stared at him. "Would you like to review that policy with me out on the curb?"

"Out —"

"You heard me."

"Charles, there's no need —" Virgilia began.

"Yes, there is. Well?"

Red with fury, the maitre d' said, "This way."

He gave them a bad table and a surly waiter. It took them forty minutes to get their bottle of wine, an hour and a half to get their dinner, all the plates were served cold. Their laughter soon grew forced, and Virgilia looked sad and miserable under the hostile eyes of other diners in the restaurant.

White and red star bursts exploded over the exhibition grounds, each display producing louder cheers than the one before. The dazzling colors played over Bartholdi's huge copper forearm and hand upholding a torch. Appearing to rise from the ground, the section of the Statue of Independence, as it was called, seemed to suggest that a buried giantess was about to break through the earth's crust. A few lucky spectators watched the fireworks display from the observation platform at the base of the upraised torch.

Standing near the statue with Jane, tired from a second day of touring the halls and foreign cottages, Madeline suddenly felt someone's eyes on her. She looked up and saw it was George.

Little Alfred Hazard from California had fallen asleep in George's arm. With disarming friendliness, George gazed at Madeline over his nephew's head. There was nothing improper in his glance, and in a moment he shifted his attention to the sky. A great silvery flower of light bloomed there.

Madeline's throat was curiously dry, however. George had been looking at her differently. She was guilty, pleased, flustered, and a little frightened.

The Carolina Club occupied a large lot in undeveloped land beyond the northern limits of the city. The Chicago fire had not reached that far, but neither had the suburbs as yet. Still, there was always a lot of horse and vehicle traffic on the otherwise deserted road that ran the past the rambling four-story house. The Carolina Club was the city's largest and most fashionable brothel.

The owner called herself Mrs. Brett. On the Fourth of July she awoke at her usual hour, 4:00 p.m. Her black maid was just emptying the last spouted pitcher of gently heated goat's milk into a zinc tub in the next room. She stretched, bathed in the milk for five minutes, then rubbed herself until she was pink. She had no proof that the milk baths promoted youth. Dr. Cosmopoulos, her very prosperous customer who was a phrenologist, professor of electromagnetism, and merchant of healthful tonics, insisted they did, so the baths had become a habit.

She put on a Chinese silk robe and breakfasted on a pint of fresh oysters and coffee. To finish, she lit a small cheroot from the lacquered Oriental box. Her button collection no longer fit in the box. She kept the buttons visible in a large clear-glass apothecary's jar with a heavy stopper. She had over three hundred buttons now.

She dabbed expensive Algerian perfume on her breasts, her throat, and under her arms. Next, with the maid's help, she put on a dress of apple-red silk with a huge bustle. She slipped on ornate finger rings with red, green, and white stones, put on a heavy necklace and bracelets of paste diamonds and a huge tiara as well. At half past six she went down from her third-floor suite to relieve the energetic young Scandinavian who came on duty at 10:00 a.m. to regulate the day trade.

There was already a large crowd of gentlemen mingling with the smartly gowned girls in the four parlors. In addition to the white girls employed in the brothel, there were also a Chinese, three black wenches, and a full-blooded Cherokee Indian who was an accomplished piano player. Princess Lou was at this moment playing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" on the upright in the main parlor. It was a Fenway; she still felt a certain illogical loyalty.

She relieved Knudson, the day man, and was in her office studying his tally of receipts when a customer staggered past the half-opened door. The man lurched back and goggled at her.

"Ashton?"

"Good evening, LeGrand," she said, hiding her surprise. "Come in, won't you? Close the door."

He did; the noise level in the office dropped considerably. Villers gazed at the paintings and marbles decorating the opulent room. With an amazed shake of his head, he lurched to Ashton's private bar and sloppily poured himself a drink. "Don't spill on my carpet, it's imported from Belgium," she said. "And for your information, my name is Mrs. Brett."

"I can't believe this," Villers said, sagging into a chair beside the great teak desk. "I've never been here before. Two of the Fenway peddlers are in town, so I thought we'd go on a spree. How long have you run this place?"

Ashton's face, smoothly and carefully powdered, still showed a slight puffiness. She was forty, and had trouble controlling her weight.

"Since it opened. That was shortly after I left Will. I wasn't exactly prepared to support myself. If you're a proper Southern girl, your education consists of learning to simper and curtsy. At least that was so in my day. Consequently, when you grow up, all you know how to do is be a wife or a whore. In the case of my first husband, who was a spineless no-good, I was the former and felt like the latter. You know, LeGrand, the ladies of Charleston would lynch me for saying this, but lately I've begun to think the suffragists aren't entirely crazy. I've given a local group a very large donation two years in a row." She feigned a demure expression. "Anonymously, of course. I wouldn't want to compromise my reputation."

He laughed. "How'd you get started here?"

"With the help of a patron."

"Yes, you'd have no trouble finding a platoon of patrons. You're as handsome as ever."

"Thank you, LeGrand. How's Will?"

"Making millions, the old son of a bitch. The judges in Philadelphia gave our Ashton model one of their bronze medals. Isn't that something? Now tell me, what happened when you left? One day you're back from Carolina, and the next — whiz. Gone."

"Will and I had a major disagreement." No sense telling him more. No sense in revealing that she'd had the bad luck to be away from Chateau Villard the day the mail brought Favor Herrington's last bill. Will was at home, recovering from summer influenza. He opened the letter from the unfamiliar law firm and then wanted to know why she had hired an attorney when, according to what she'd told him, all she'd done in South Carolina was visit. She evaded, lied, resisted as long as she could, but he was a stubborn old devil, and success had only strengthened him. When she screamed that she'd roast in hell before she told him anything, he shrugged and said he'd telegraph Favor Herrington and demand an explanation. He would exercise his marital rights and insist that Herrington could not claim confidentiality because Ashton was spending his money. Terrified, Ashton confessed to pledging an enormous sum for Mont Royal by means of a letter of credit on their bank.

She tried to put the best possible face on what she'd done, but she knew she was failing when she saw loathing narrow his eyes and twist his normally relaxed mouth. When it was all out, when she'd admitted she'd almost taken Mont Royal away from her own family, he reminded her of his warning after she murdered the senora's brother-in-law in Santa Fe.

"I said I'd never tolerate meanness like that again. I love you, Ashton, old fool that I am. But I'll be cursed if I'll live with someone so low. I want you packed and out of here by noon tomorrow."

Villers said, "A disagreement, you say. You divorced him, did you?"

Ashton shook her head. She hated the feeling of sentimental longing this conversation was generating. It was a feeling all too familiar. "It's possible he divorced me, though. I don't know."

"He hasn't that I know of," Villers said. "Does he know where you are?"

"No, but I don't expect he cares. I'm perfectly happy," she lied. "If a woman has her health and her beauty and some regular income, what more does she need?" Why had Will been so damned upright? Often, in the middle of the night she desperately missed cozying up to his skinny old body under a thick comforter.

Her dark eyes widened in her powder-white face. Villers was studying her in a way she didn't like. "What is it, LeGrand?"

"Just thinking. I appreciate that you and Will must have had a good reason for the split-up. But he was your husband. Maybe he still is. He's going to be mighty sorry to hear what's become of you."

Her heartbeat quickened. "You wouldn't be a snake and tell him about me."

"You care about the old bastard's feelings?"

"Why, no, I — I just want to preserve my privacy."

"I'll preserve it." Villers eyed her. "In exchange for a little taste of the old times."

Ashton's fine bust lifted like a ship's prow heaving from the water. All outraged gentility, she said, "I own the Carolina Club. I am not one of the workers."

He unfolded himself from the chair. "All right, then I can't promise to hold my tongue."

She seized his hand and rubbed the palm with her thumb. "Of course I can always change my policy for an evening."

Villers licked his lips. "No charge?"

She wanted to hit him. She wanted to weep. She smiled, tossing her head back; her elaborately pinned dark hair shimmered.

"Why, of course not. Never a charge for a friend."

Later, while the notes of Princess Lou's "Hail, Columbia" drifted upstairs — aside from some patriotic bunting on the portico, it was the club's sole acknowledgment of Independence Day — LeGrand Villers finished for the third time, not having roused her once.

As he rolled away, he accidentally touched the soft rounded ridge of fat that kept growing and growing above her mons, no matter how little she ate. The Fenway sales manager wasn't so rude as to say anything, but she felt his fingers hesitate before he drew them from her stomach.

Somehow that touch destroyed her. She was a strong woman, and a successful one, but there was nothing left for her except decay, the slow ruin of her beauty, death. And every once in a while she was forced to confront that.

Soon Villers was snoring. Ashton lay on her side, hands tucked under her chin, knees drawn up to her breasts, wide-eyed and wishing she were a child playing with Brett at Mont Royal once again.

On Thursday night, twenty-nine members of the Main and Hazard families gathered in the private dining room set aside for them by the hotel. At the open end of the horseshoe table, an easel displayed the architect's rendering of the white-columned facade of the new Mont Royal plantation house. Madeline described the house, then invited everyone to come visit whenever they could. She sat down to warm applause.

George rose, proper and polished. The room was quiet except for the rustle of Willa's skirts; she was holding little Alfred and gently bounding him up and down to soothe his fussiness. He began to drowse, thumb in his mouth.

George cleared his throat. Charles lit another of the cigars whose smoke hung heavy in the airless room.

"I am glad we are together on this momentous anniversary. We share so much that is important, though, unfortunately, I cannot include good Republican politics in that statement."

Everyone laughed, Champ Nevin as heartily as anyone. A cigarette balanced on the edge of his coffee cup sent off smoke in an ascending corkscrew. Two places away, Stanley coughed into his napkin, making a show of it and shooting looks at Patricia's husband. Earlier, Stanley and the young newsman had had a row over Grant's 1869 treaty of annexation of Santo Domingo, which the President's emissaries had negotiated without the knowledge or consent of Congress or the cabinet. The Senate had killed the treaty, and the whole affair had started the defection of important Republicans such as George from the regular wing to a new reform wing of the party. Champ Nevin had nearly given Stanley a seizure when he called Grant's behavior "criminal."

George continued: "I was trying to organize some appropriate remarks when I thought of the city of Philadelphia's Independence Day poster. Have you seen it?" Several of them nodded. "Allow me to quote from it." He consulted a note, reading the words about 1776 and 1876. He dropped the note beside his water glass.

"That is an expert summation of our country, and our own lives. Since the Mains and the Hazards were first drawn together by a friendship forged at the Military Academy, we have all changed, and so has the nation. We will never again be as we were, be what we were, except in one regard. Our affection, one family for the other, is immutable."

Never again as we were, Madeline thought. How right he is. Constance was gone. Cooper had not been invited, though everyone keenly regretted Judith's absence. Ashton was presumably in Chicago with her millionaire husband — no loss. Charles and Billy, whose lives had diverged on such different courses, showed no clear signs of awkwardness with one another, despite their strong ties from West Point and the war period.

Over there, bored and blank, Stanley sat beside his churlish son, no doubt puzzling as to why either of them had agreed to attend George's reunion.

And, most important, her dear Orry was gone.

"That affection has carried us through a time of national crisis and testing," George said. "Through dark days of warfare and political strife, the bond has grown thin but it has never broken. It remains strong to this day.

"My mother believed the mountain laurel has a special strength that enables it to withstand the ravages of the seasons. She said only love and family could generate a similar strength in human beings, and I believe it's true. You are the proof. We have grown from two families into one, and we have survived. That strength and closeness, born of friendship and love, is one of Orry Main's great gifts to us, and the reason he is very much with us tonight. I loved my friend Orry, and I love every one of you. Thank you for coming to Philadelphia to reaffirm — to —"

He cleared his throat again, bowed his head. He quickly rubbed a finger in his right eye.

"Thank you," he said in the silence. "Goodnight."

Charles and Willa were the first to leave the dining room. Charles noticed a peculiar hush in the lobby. Guests conversed in whispers, or stood reading newspapers. He patted Gus's shoulder and strode to the desk.

The clerk put down his copy of the Inquirer. "What's wrong?" Charles asked.

Pale, the clerk, said, "General Custer is massacred. And all his men with him."

The moon washed the roofs of Philadelphia and the face of the man at the hotel window. He wore his trousers and nothing else. It was half past one. He couldn't sleep. Because of that, neither could Willa. He heard her shifting in the bed behind him.

Musing, he said, "I'm glad Magee's coming down to the ranch to visit when he gets leave. I want to know what he thinks of the massacre."

"It's upset you, hasn't it?"

Charles nodded.

"What do you think about it?" she asked.

"It's hard to decide without all the facts. The dispatches are still pretty muddled. No two agree. I'm sorry for the men who served under Custer, and for his wife, but God help me, I don't feel sadness for him. I don't know, Willa, it's like — like watching a wheel come full circle. A lot of men said Custer took us to the Washita because his reputation had suffered as a result of his discipline and he wanted public favor again. He needed a victory. He got one, but it was dirty. He never quite canceled out the Washita, and this time it sounds like he was after another victory in hopes of doing it. There's some indication that he disobeyed orders and rushed in where he shouldn't."

He let out a long breath. "I keep thinking he was hunting the presidency, not the Sioux. I wish I could say I liked the poor son of a bitch now he's dead."

She heard the confusion in his voice, the echo of bad memories. He saw her outstretched hands glimmer in the light. "I love you, Charles Main. Come here, let me hold you."

He was halfway to the bed when Gus screamed.

Wildly, he crashed the bedroom door back, lunged across the parlor and into the smaller bedroom. Gus was fighting the sheet, rolling to and fro, crying, "Don't do that, don't do that."

"Gus, it's Pa. You're all right. You're all right!" He gathered the boy in his arms and pressed him close. He stroked his hair. It was damp from sweat.

Presently Charles sat back, and Gus stared at him with a bewildered air. The scar looked black in the moonlight. Charles silently cursed all the Bents and Custers of the world.

Gus's huge, terrified eyes focused. "Pa."

Charles's shoulders sagged. The tension left him. "Yes," he said.

Virgilia's was the only white face in the small, plain restaurant. She and Scipio and Jane had come there for a farewell breakfast. Eggs, fried fish, corn bread — all deliriously hot. The other tables held some people who evidently came from the neighborhood, and there was one waiter, the cook's son.

"I'm very glad we had this chance to meet," Virgilia said as she finished.

Jane said, "I am too. I wish my husband could have seen the exhibition." There was no self-pity in the statement, merely a solemn declaration.

"I don't know as I'd wish that," Scipio said.

"Why not?" Virgilia asked.

"I'm not so sure we have much to celebrate." He folded his supple hands together and rested them on the old tablecloth. "The war ended eleven years ago. That isn't a long tine, but sometimes I think everything the war accomplished is already gone. Yesterday I saw some signs in a building downtown. Two signs, on different doors. White only. Colored only."

Jane sighed. "We don't have signs like that in South Carolina yet, but we might as well. The Klan keeps screaming 'nigger, nigger,' the white people protest the school taxes, we can't ride the public transportation again, the Hampton Red Shirts are out, the Democrats will win this fall, the last soldiers will leave — the war isn't won at all. You're right. Everything did look bright a few years ago, and now it's almost wiped away. I think we're sinking right back to 1860."

Scipio said, "I agree."

Jane covered her eyes a moment, then shook her head. "Sometimes I get so tired of struggling."

"But we mustn't give up," Virgilia said. "If we don't win in our lifetime, we'll win a hundred years from now. If I didn't believe it, I couldn't live another day."

Outside, Jane and Virgilia embraced, and Jane set off for the downtown hotel she and Madeline would be leaving today. Virgilia linked her arm with her husband's and they walked in an easy, pensive silence toward their rooms three blocks away. A baby cried in a shanty. A yellow dog with sores on his back scratched himself at the edge of a mud hole. It began to rain.

Some white boys, age ten or eleven and probably from a nearby neighborhood of immigrant Irish, skulked after them, and suddenly flung rocks and shouted, "Nigger-loving whore." Scipio ran them off with no trouble. He was startled to see his wife crying when he strode back to her.

He started to ask the reason. She shook her head, smiled at him, and took his arm again. They continued along the lane between the hovels and tilted tenements, and Virgilia thought of living near here with Grady, so many years ago. Like Jane, she was disheartened.

She tightened her hand on Scipio's arm, drawing strength from the contact. They walked on. The rain fell harder.

George had rehearsed the little speech for days. In the confusion of leave-takings at the depot, he found himself as tongue-tied as a boy. The moment he drew Madeline away from Jane, he forgot every word he'd memorized.

Color rose in his cheeks. "I hope you won't think me improper —"

"Yes, George?" She regarded him with genteel calm, waiting. He almost stammered.

"I would loathe myself if I dishonored Orry's memory in any way —"

"I'm sure you would never do that, George."

"I would like to ask — that is, would you ever consider — I mean to say — Madeline, autumn in the Lehigh Valley is a lovely time of year. Would you ever consider visiting me at Belvedere and letting me show you the, ah —" He strangled the next word like a lovesick country swain: "Foliage?"

She was touched and amused.

"Yes, I would certainly consider it. I think I would enjoy it."

He paled from relief. "Wonderful. You must bring Jane if you want a companion. Would coming this fall suit you at all?"

Her eyes warmed. "Yes, George. A visit this fall would be lovely."

71

Autumn wind swept the valley. Sunset spread orange light over the roofs of Lehigh Station, the chimneys of Hazard's, the winding river, the laurel-covered heights. Madeline's dark hair, so carefully arranged before the stroll, tossed back and forth around her shoulders.

George kept his hands in the pockets of his gray trousers. He wore a small white rose in his black lapel, in her honor. She and Jane had arrived on the train that morning.

"I'm very glad you came," he said with obvious difficulty. "I don't find it easy or pleasant to be alone all the time."

"That's exactly how I feel." She could think of nothing less inane than that. His presence, his masculinity, disturbed her in an unexpected way. She liked him and felt guilty about it.

They climbed the worn path. The laurel seethed in the wind. "I remember coming up here with Constance the night before I went to Washington at the start of the war. I thought I'd be home in ninety days." He smiled wryly. "God, we were such innocents. I had no idea what we were really embarking upon."

"No one had any idea."

"It was the most monumental experience of our lives."

"Now things seem a little ordinary by comparison, don't they?"

He avoided her eye. "Yes. They seem unfamiliar, too. Because Constance is gone. And Orry."

She nodded. "I do miss him terribly."

They climbed higher. George's face was red as a truant's when he blurted, "I'm really glad we had the reunion in July."

"Indeed. What you said at that marvelous supper was exactly right. Our families should stay close."

After a long pause:

"I would enjoy seeing your new house, Madeline."

"You're welcome at Mont Royal any time."

The wind rushed over the summits of the mountains. Lamps and gaslights shone down in the town, misty yellow, misty blue. On the western horizon, the light was dimming, as if a hidden foundry was banking its fire. Suddenly George stumbled.

"Oh, good heavens," Madeline exclaimed, clutching his shoulder while he righted himself. She was conscious of his size. He was a full head shorter, but a vigorous figure of a man — although now, again, he had the sheepish look of an adolescent.

She felt none too mature herself. Her stomach felt fluttery. She'd known this moment would come ever since she noticed him watching her in Philadelphia.

"Madeline, I'm a plain-spoken man. I have — great personal regard for you — and not merely because you're the widow of my best friend. I do not — I do not want to press you. But I very much want to ask — would you be outraged if I were to suggest that you and I — in due time, perhaps —"

He couldn't finish. She brushed a windblown strand of hair from her temple. "I would welcome what I believe you have in mind, George. So long as there is no confusion about my past. My parentage."

"None," he said, his voice very strong suddenly. "It doesn't matter a damn."

"Good."

He cleared his throat yet again, lifted himself on tiptoe, and leaned forward. He gave her cheek a chaste kiss.

She touched his arm a moment, then let her hand fall. He understood the assent, and broke out in a great smile.

In near-darkness, they climbed higher. He said he wanted to show her the crater left by the meteorite that fell in the spring of '61, like a harbinger of God's wrath. "I haven't seen it in a year or more. Nothing grows there. The earth's poisoned."

They rounded a bend in the path and saw a deep emerald bowl in the mountain. "This isn't it —" she began.

"Yes, it is," he said, his voice hushed.

"How lovely."

In the crater, on the sloping sides, the concave bottom, a carpet of summer grass caught the wind and moved gently, gently, as the night came down.

MADELINE'S JOURNAL

George stepped away from the house and across the drive to the place where the lawn began to slope toward the Ashley. He let his gaze rise slowly up the clean white vertical of the column nearest the double doors. Two and a half stories the column soared, blending and mingling with the dazzle of the Christmas morning sky.

Inside the house, Madeline's servants laughed and chattered, preparing the midday feast. The servants were black men and women, all on a regular wage. But it was not that, or the inevitable Spanish moss, or the egret lazily ascending above the tree line that reminded George he was in a different country, so to speak. The windows reminded him: shutters back, sashes raised to let in the mild air. Back home, Belvedere would be closed up against the chill.

Madeline watched his pleased reaction, which in turn brought a smile to her face. George sighed and returned to her where she waited by the tall doors. He took her hand.

"It's a magnificent house. Orry would be proud. But it really does belong to him. I can't live in it, even for part of the year. I just wouldn't feel right."

"I'm sorry, George. I can't say I'm surprised. Well, no harm — I built it in his memory, and there's enough money to keep it in the family. Perhaps when Theo's better established, he and Marie-Louise and their children will move down. In any case, because I thought you might feel as you do, last Thursday I inspected a snug town house in Charleston. I put down a deposit to hold it until the first of the year. If it suits you, it will suit me."

"Oh, I'm confident it will suit me." He stretched to kiss her cheek. "Merry Christmas, my dear."

72

Madeline closed the journal. She found a length of white satin ribbon and tied the book like a package, finishing it with a small bow. She climbed the right side of the great double staircase that reached down from above like welcoming arms, and then climbed a smaller stair to the entrance to one of the vast spaces beneath the roof beams. She lit a lamp taken from a small tripod table and carried it into the attic. Near one of the wide brick chimneys that bracketed the ends of the house was a small red leather trunk with round brass studs and a brass key in the brass lock plate. She opened the lid. There lay eleven more ribbon-bound copybooks like the one she was carrying. She laid the new one in, regarded the books for a thoughtful moment, then closed the lid and turned the key. She left the attic, extinguished the lamp, carried the key down to her writing desk, and prepared a paper tag. She inscribed the tag in ink, to identify the key, and tied it on with good twine. Then she put the key in a small drawer of the desk, for whatever posterity there might be. It was New Year's morning, 1877.

73

"To carry the election peacefully if we can, forcibly if we must." That was the published intent of the Mississippi, or Shotgun, Plan originated in 1874. By forcing all white voters into the Democratic party through social pressure or threats of violence, and by intimidating blacks to keep them from voting at all, Mississippi had been redeemed.

In 1876, South Carolina sought redemption with the same methods.

That year, nationally, the Republicans faced a difficult election fight. Many in the party wanted to disassociate it from the carpetbagger governments still in control in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina. Bayonet rule in the South was perceived as a failure by a majority of the American public. It had become a huge liability.

South Carolina's carpetbag governor, Daniel Henry Chamberlain of New England, was a cold, polished man who had previously been state attorney general. Somewhat more honest than the governor before him, he was nevertheless a Republican. So the Hampton rifle clubs rode against him, and against his supporters.

The situation in the state was explosive. In July, during the racial rioting at Hamburg, whites executed five black captives. In August, Calbraith Butler, Charles Main's old commander in the Hampton Legion and a militant Straightout Democrat, led armed men to a Republican rally for Chamberlain in Edgefield. There he took the platform, demanded time to speak, heaped abuse on Chamberlain and his party, and left the rally in a shambles.

Violence escalated. Negro Democrats leaving a meeting in Charleston were attacked by Negro Republicans and fought a pitched battle on King Street. Another race riot convulsed Ellenton, in Aiken County. Roving bands of blacks, disgruntled about low wages in the Combahee River rice fields, burned a mill and gin house near Beaufort and tore up track to derail a train bound for Port Royal.

Because of such incidents, extra troops were poured into South Carolina. Thousands of deputy marshals arrived to watch the polls and keep the elections honest. On October 17, in the wake of further pleas for help, President Grant sent a proclamation through General Thomas H. Ruger, ordering all South Carolina rifle clubs to disband. Most merely changed their names.

November 7. Election Day. Despite the presence of soldiers and marshals, men known to be residents of Georgia and North Carolina were seen at South Carolina polling places near the borders. Bands of horsemen galloped from hamlet to hamlet, voting in each. In notorious Edgefield County, where whites voted at the Court House, blacks with the courage to vote were sent to a tiny schoolhouse that couldn't accommodate them all before the polls closed. A few courageous blacks marched to the Court House to protest and demand their rights. Armed men organized by M. W. Gary, the district's foremost proponent of the Mississippi Plan, turned them back.

The shadow of fraud fell across the state and the country.

Disputed vote tallies in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina put the outcome of the presidential election in doubt. Democrat Samuel Tilden needed but one electoral vote to win. Rutherford B. Hayes needed nineteen. In the three disputed states, recounts would be necessary.

At first it seemed that South Carolina had given both parties a victory. Hayes had won his race by a narrow margin, with an equally narrow win going to Governor Hampton and his slate of Democratic legislators.

Then the recount began. South Carolina's Board of Canvassers was Republican, and these officials denied enough Democratic votes to ratify Hayes's election while overturning the victories of Hampton and his slate. Governor Chamberlain was given another term, and the Republicans a majority in the General Assembly. The Democrats shouted fraud.

Chamberlain's hold on the governorship was feeble. Late in November, Grant ordered troops into the State House to sustain his power.

Democratic legislators arriving at the General Assembly were turned away by Republican speaker E. W. M. Mackey. The Democrats organized in Carolina Hall and elected William Wallace as their speaker.

On December 7, Governor Daniel Chamberlain was inaugurated.

On December 14, in a separate ceremony, Governor Wade Hampton was inaugurated.

Observers didn't know whether they were watching a tragedy or a comedy. There was a four-day period in which both Republican and Democratic legislators met in the General Assembly. Both speakers entertained motions and conducted debates. There were simultaneous roll calls and simultaneous votes. Neither group would recognize the presence of the other. But much like the Union and Confederate soldiers who had confronted one another in the entrenchments at Petersburg, some of the opponents grew friendly. When the Republicans neglected to pay their gas bill and the company turned off the supply to the hall, the Democrats paid what was due.

The strain of operating two legislatures in one chamber, not to speak of the confusion, proved too great. The Wallace assembly returned to Carolina Hall. Then the courts judged Hampton and the Wallace legislature to be the legal claimants, but Chamberlain refused to give up the State House. Armed troops continued to enforce his authority.

Congress created a special election commission — five senators, five representatives, five Supreme Court justices — to arbitrate the disputed national returns. On February 9, 1877, the commission endorsed the official Florida tally favoring Hayes. On February 16, the commission endorsed the Louisiana tally favoring Hayes. On February 28, it endorsed the South Carolina tally favoring Hayes.

Tilden refused to contest the decisions. Southern Democrats immediately began negotiating that a Republican administration would be sympathetic to the Southern viewpoint. In return, the Democrats supported Hayes, who was peacefully inaugurated as President of the United States on March 5.

On March 23, President Hayes invited the gubernatorial claimants Hampton and Chamberlain to Washington for separate private meetings. Hampton was persuasive when pledging to uphold black rights if troops were withdrawn. Governor Chamberlain's weak hold on the State House was broken.

On April 10, following a decision by the Hayes cabinet, the detail of Army infantrymen in the State House in Columbia stacked arms and withdrew. The last occupied state in the South was no longer occupied.

On April 11, at noon, Wade Hampton entered the governor's office.

South Carolina was redeemed.

Reconstruction was finished.