Love and War

the local residents didn't upset her, but it did. She couldn't banish the feeling, only contain it.

Control returned in a minute or so. She shook the reins, and by the time she reached the big stable at Belvedere, she was composed again. Determined to say nothing about what had happened, she hoped George wouldn't hear about it by accident.

By the time he got home, the rest of the family had gathered for supper. He entered the dining room as Constance was speaking to their daughter in that friendly but firm tone she reserved for matters of discipline.

'No, Patricia, you may not spend any part of your allowance that way. As you well know, a glass or marble egg has just one purpose — to cool the palms of an overly excited young woman at a dance or a party. It will be a few years before you are in that position.'

Patricia stuck out her lip. 'Carrie King has one.'

'Carrie King is thirteen, two years older than you. Further­more, she looks twenty.'

'Acts like it, too, so I hear,' remarked William with a salacious grin. George was amused, but the parent in him didn't dare show it. He frowned at his sturdy, handsome son.

Behind his wife's chair, he bent to kiss her cheek. 'Sorry I'm late. I stopped at the office.' The explanation was familiar in these days of furious war production. He felt her move slightly beneath the affectionate hand he had placed on her shoulder. Damn. She smelled the spirits on him.

'Tell me about your speech,' Constance said as he walked to his place at the other end of the long wooden table. 'Was it a success?'

'Magnificent.' He sat down.

'George, I really want to know.' He responded with a tired shrug. 'The rally, then. How did it go?'

'Predictably.' One of the house girls set terrapin soup in front of him. 'The rebs were consigned to perdition, the flag waved verbally several hundred times, then that pol from Bethlehem issued the call for volunteers. He got eight.'

Some soup helped him relax and readjust himself to this confined but comfortable domestic universe. The dining room was bright with the shimmer of the gas mantles on fine silver and flocked wallpaper. He peeped at Constance over his spoon. What a lucky fellow he was. Her skin still had the smoothness of newly skimmed cream, and her eyes were the same vivid blue that had enchanted him the night they met, at a dance in Corpus Christi arranged for army officers temporarily stranded en route to Mexico. After the war, he had brought her to Lehigh Station to marry her.

Constance was two inches taller than her husband. He took that as a symbolic incentive to be worthy of her. Though Stanley had once predicted in a sniffy way that her practice of Catholicism would disrupt the marriage, it hadn't. Years of child rearing, intimacies shared, and troubles borne together had deepened their love and kept physical attraction strong in the marriage.

Patricia fidgeted. She stabbed her poached fish with her fork, as if the fish were responsible for her failure to get a hand cooler.

'Did the factory produce a lot of havelocks today?' George asked, addressing the question more to Brett than anyone. She sat on his left, her eyes downcast, her face fatigued. She hadn't said one word to him.

'Quite a few, yes,' Constance said, simultaneously shooting out her left arm. She thwacked Patricia's ear with her middle finger. That ended the fish-stabbing.

The meal dragged to its finish. Brett remained quiet. After George gave the customary permission for the children to be excused, he spoke briefly to Constance, then followed his sister-in-law to the library. He closed the doors before he said: 'I heard about the trouble today.'

She looked up wearily. 'I had hoped you wouldn't.'

'It's a small town. And, regrettably, you are very much a center of attention.'

She sighed, absently brushing her palms across the open Leslie's in her lap. George lit one of his strong dark brown cigars as she said, 'I suppose I was foolish to think it would all pass unnoticed.'

'Especially since Fessenden and his cousin are under arrest for assaulting you.'

'Who charged them?'

'Pinckney Herbert. So, you see, you do have some friends in Lehigh Station.' After telling her that he had already written orders discharging both of her attackers from their jobs at Hazard's, he said in a gentle voice, 'I can't tell you how angry and sorry I am about the whole business. Constance and I care for you just as much as we care for any member of this family. We know how hard it is for you to be so far from home and separated from your husband —'

That broke through. She leaped up, spilling the illustrated paper on the carpet, and flung her arms around his neck like a daughter wanting a father's comfort. 'I miss Billy so terribly — I'm ashamed to say how much —'

'Don't be.' He patted her back. 'Don't be.'

'The only salvation is, I'll soon be able to join him somewhere. Everyone says the war won't last ninety days.'

'So they do.' He released her and turned away so she wouldn't see his reaction. 'We'll do our best to see that those ninety days pass quickly — without another incident. I know it wasn't the first. You're a brave young woman, Brett. But don't fight every battle alone.'

She shook her head. 'George, I must. I've always looked after myself.' Forcing a smile: 'I'll be fine. Ninety days isn't so long.'

What more could he do? Frustrated, he excused himself and left, trailing a blue ribbon of smoke.

Upstairs, he found his son marching in the hall and bellowing the popular song about hanging Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree. George stopped that and ordered William to his room, where he worked with the boy on ciphering lessons for half an hour. He next spent fifteen minutes with Patricia, trying to convince her that she'd have a hand cooler at the proper time. He failed.

In bed in his nightshirt, uncomfortably warm despite the summer breeze blowing in, he reached for the comforting curve of his wife's breast and lay close against her back while he described events at the General Merchandise. 'She's counting on a short war to put an end to that sort of thing.'

'So am I, George. I haven't heard from Father in months, and I worry about him down there in Texas. You know he never hid his hatred of slavery and slaveowners. Surely it'll all end soon. I can't believe Americans will fight each other for very long. It's inconceivable that they're doing it at all.'

'As Orry said, we had thirty years to prevent it, but we didn't. I hate to dash Brett's hopes or yours —' He broke off.

'George, don't do that. Finish what you were going to say.'

Reluctantly, he said, 'Brett's forgotten that in May, Lincoln called for another forty-two thousand men. But not for the short term. The boys who signed up at the rally are in for three years.'

Her voice grew faint. 'I forgot it, too. You aren't hopeful about a short war?'

He waited a moment but finally admitted, 'If I were hopeful, I'd have thrown away Boss Cameron's telegraph message the minute it arrived.'

12

While Brett was encountering trouble in the United States, her brother Cooper and his family were nearing the end of a rail journey in Great Britain.

Smoke and cinders kept flying into the family's first-class compartment because the children, Judah and Marie-Louise, took turns leaning over the sill of the lowered window. Cooper permitted it, but his wife, Judith, considered it dangerous, so she sat forward, her posture tense as she held the waist of one child, then the other.

Cooper Main, forty-one, sat opposite her with a sheaf of naval blueprints unrolled on his knees. He made notes on the blueprints in pencil. Before starting, he'd drawn the curtains of the door and windows on the corridor