Love and War

Brett, too, was feeling ashamed of her outburst. Anxiety was the chief cause. The Ledger-Union was reporting many lives lost along the Petersburg siege lines. The word widow was one she hated to think about in connection with herself.

But she had to be honest; there was another irritant. Madeline's revelation in the rooming house. It had stunned Brett, but more than that, it had loosed an unexpected emotional reaction. As a presumed white woman, Madeline had earned Brett's whole­hearted respect and affection. Now — well, she couldn't help it — she regarded Orry's wife differently.

It was a reaction bred into her from childhood. That was an explanation, not an excuse. The reaction shamed her, and yet she seemed powerless to banish it or keep it from affecting her behavior.

Madeline was aware of the new reserve on Brett's part ever since that pivotal moment in Washington. Whenever she felt incensed, she reminded herself that Orry's sister was under great strain, had been living far from her native state for more than three years, had had her husband captured, imprisoned, wounded. That was an immense load for any wife to bear.

Brett's response to the revelation was a curious and ironic contrast to her involvement with the colored orphanage, Madeline thought. Her concern for the welfare of the black children was evident from the passion and frequency with which she spoke of them. At least that was a change, and a remarkable one for a young woman bred in the frequently arrogant traditions of the Carolina low country. The war was changing everyone and everything in some fashion; a pity it couldn't alter old attitudes about black blood.

She hoped Brett would eventually be capable of overlooking what she now clearly regarded as a taint. If not — well, it would certainly alter family relationships. It sometimes seemed to Madeline that God had put Americans to a cruel, perhaps impossible test when He permitted the Dutch to land that first shipload of slaves on the Virginia coast so long ago. The black man out of Africa had repeatedly exposed the white man's weaknesses. It was, perhaps, fitting revenge for the moment when the leg irons clinked shut.

There had been unpleasant notes sounded at this table tonight. Three war widows. She understood the attempt at lightness but found it disturbing. Thank heaven Orry had done nothing about joining Pickett's staff. He should be relatively safe in Richmond until the city fell. Afterward, he might be interned awhile — even mistreated — but he would survive that; he was a strong, brave man.

Trying to restart conversation, Madeline once more addressed Brett. 'This friend of yours — the one who operates the orphanage — will I have a chance to meet him?'

'I think so. I expect he'll pay at least one more visit before he goes into the army. I certainly hope he will.' Brett smiled. 'You'll like him, I know.'

And you like him very much indeed, Madeline said to herself. You seem able to accept him for what he is, but not me. Is that because you thought I was something you have always been told was better?

Sensing the onset of more bad feelings, Madeline blocked them by turning back to Constance, this time with a frivolous question about current fashions. The candles burned down, and conversation limped on, but something had gone out of Constance in the past few minutes. Her answers were forced, her efforts at banter unsuccessful. As they were finishing their lemon ices and coconut macaroons, she said abruptly, 'I believe I'll go down to town for an hour.'

Madeline asked, 'Would you like company?'

'Thank you, no. I'm going to church.'

It wasn't necessary to tell them she felt the need. Her face made it evident.

She drove the carriage herself down the twisting road in the night glare from Hazard's. Under Wotherspoon's guidance, the entire complex continued to operate twenty-four hours a day — and had never been so profitable.

Reaching the streets of the lower town, Constance felt the night wind rising, blowing dust. Lamps burned late in the army recruiting office. As she drove by, she noticed a sturdy Negro boy, the son of a worker at Hazard's, standing some distance from the entrance. Between the boy and the doorway, Lute Fessenden's cousin and some equally loutish crony whispered and joked.

When a few of the town's black men had attempted to visit the recruiter, there had been incidents of harassment. To prevent another, she slowed the carriage and prepared to speak to the substitute broker. Before she could, the black boy turned and disappeared in a dark alley. The significance of the two men loitering outside the office hadn't been lost on him.

Disgusted, she drove on to the small Catholic chapel that had been named, in a burst of poetic piety, St. Margaret's-in-the-Vale. The river valley, where flying soot and bits of cinder constantly blackened everything, could never live up to the literary connotations of vale, but it was a word very much liked by Lehigh Station's small Catholic community.

Because of the heat of the evening, the front doors of St. Margaret's stood open. Constance tied the horse to a wrought-iron post — Hazard's had donated and installed a row of eight — and slipped in, hoping meditation and prayer might lift the formless anxiety that had settled on her during supper. Inside the entrance, she genuflected, then slipped in to the second pew on the left.

Kneeling, she noticed a heavy, middle-aged woman across the aisle. The woman was poorly dressed, a shawl around her shoulders. Her forehead rested on her clasped hands as she prayed. Constance knew her. Mrs. Waleski's only boy had died in a Cold Harbor medical tent.

Hot wind gusting up the aisle fluttered the votive candles. The seven-foot Christ, painted and gilded, looked down from His cross with pity. Softly, Constance began praying.

Her mind was strangely divided, one part of it on her murmured plea for intercession, another on the great weight crushing her. She knew who had put the weight there. A stupid, thoughtless woman —

Here we are. Three war widows.

Ever since making that remark, she had been possessed by a premonition. For one of the three women at the table, the words would come true.

She was so sure of it, she was consumed with a fear no prayers could allay. Another fierce wind gust blew out half a dozen of the votive lights in their little glass cups red as blood.

114

Charles suffered a ravaging intestinal ailment during the first ten days of July. Still weak, still belonging in bed, he got up on the eleventh morning, obtained a pass, and set off on a dangerous ride around the west of Richmond, then northeast to Fredericksburg. His only guarantees of safe passage were his revolver and shotgun.

It would be his last trip to Barclay's Farm. He had decided that while lying with his knees drawn up against his pain-pierced gut. In bed, he'd had plenty of time to straighten out his thinking. The South would go down fighting, and he would go down with it. That was his sole duty now.

He couldn't deny he loved Gus, but she deserved a man with better prospects. Each day the odds against avoiding a fatal bullet increased. In the short run, he would hurt her. But when she found, as she surely would, a better man — someone whose head had not been oddly twisted by his war experiences — she would thank him.

He reached the farm at the end of a rain shower. The sun was out again, occasionally hidden by the clouds that flew over fields and woods at great speed, exchanging light for shadow, shadow for light. It was half past five in the evening. The clouds, the quality of sunlight at that hour, and the sparkling clarity of the land after the rain helped restore some of the farm's earlier beauty.

'Major Charles!' Washington, mending harness on the back stoop, jumped to his feet as Charles rode up. 'Lord save us — old Sport looks about as starved as you do. Didn't expect we'd see you for a while. Wait till I tell Miz Augusta —'

'I'll tell her myself.' Unsmiling, Charles yanked the back door open without knocking. 'Gus?' He stepped into