Love and War

avoiding his eyes, she said, 'Perhaps you should have ordered one for yourself.'

'In case I accept the commission?'

'Yes.'

'Oh, but that's a cavalry sword. I couldn't wear it even if I decided to —'

'Orry,' she interrupted, 'you're evading. You're evading me and evading a decision.'

'I plead guilty to the latter,' he admitted with an expression swift to come and go but revealing all the same. He was hiding something from her — behavior not typical of him. 'I can't go to Richmond yet. There are too many things standing in the way. Foremost is your situation here.'

'I can look after myself splendidly — as you well know.'

'Now don't get tart with me. Of course I know it. But there's also Mother to consider.'

'I can look after her, too.'

'Well, you can't run this plantation without an overseer. The Mercury printed my advertisement again. Did the packet boat bring any replies?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'Then I must keep searching. I've got to raise a good crop this year if I'm to contribute anything to the government — which I agreed to do by signing those papers today. I won't even think of Richmond till I find the right man to take over.'

Later they went to the library. From the shelves Tillet Main had furnished with works of quality, they chose a finely bound Paradise Lost. During the years when they had met in secret, they had frequently read poetry aloud; the verse rhythms sometimes became a poor substitute for those of love-making. Living together, they discovered such reading still brought pleasure.

They took places on a settee Orry had moved in just for this purpose. He was always on Madeline's left so that he could hold that side of the book. A dim corner of the room contained the stand on which he had hung one of his army uniforms after he came home from Mexico. The coat had both sleeves intact. Orry seldom glanced at the coat any longer, for which she was thankful.

He leafed through the poem's first book until he found a bit of paper between pages. 'Here's the place.' He cleared his throat and began in the middle of line 594:

'. . . As when the sun new ris'n
Looks through the horizontal misty air
Shorn of his beams ...'

Madeline took it up, her voice murmurous in the near-dark:

'. . . or from behind the moon
In dim eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes monarchs.'

'Lesser folk, too,' he said. She laid the book in her lap as he continued, 'Cooper claims we got into this war because the South refused to accept the changes taking place in the country. I remember in particular his saying that we couldn't deal with either the necessity for change or its inevitability.' He patted the book. 'It seems John Milton understood.'

'Will the war really change anything, though? When it's over, won't things be pretty much as they were?' 'Some of our leaders would like to believe so. I don't.' But he didn't want to spoil the evening with melancholy speculation; he kissed her cheek and suggested they continue reading. She surprised him by taking his face between her cool palms and gazing at him with eyes that shone with happy tears. 'Nothing will change this. I love you beyond life itself.' Her mouth pressed his, opening slightly; the kiss was long and full of sweet sharing. He brought his hand up and tangled it in her hair. She leaned on his shoulder, whispering, 'I've lost interest in British poets. Blow out the lights and let's go upstairs.'

Next day, while Orry was in the fields, Madeline went hunting for a shawl she needed to mend. She and Orry shared a large walk-in wardrobe adjoining his bedroom; she searched for the shawl there.

Behind a row of hanging frock coats he never wore she spied a familiar package. She had last seen the presentation saber downstairs in the library. Why on earth had he brought it up here and hidden —?

She caught her breath, then reached behind the coats and lifted the package out. Its red wax seals were unbroken. No wonder he hadn't been amused when she teased him about a second sword.

She replaced the package and carefully shifted the coats in front of it again. She would keep her discovery to herself and let him speak to her in his own good time. But there was no longer any doubt about his intentions.

And with fear of change perplexes monarchs. Remembering the line, she stood near the room's single oval window, rubbing her forearms as if to warm them.

18

A sinking sun bled red light through the office windows next evening. Orry sweated at the desk, tired but needing to finish the purchase list for his factor in Charleston. He had been forced to move his business back to the Eraser company, which had served his father, because Cooper had transferred the assets of the family shipping firm to the Navy Department. Cooper held all the CSC stock, and so had a perfect right to do it. But it was damn inconvenient, requiring another adjustment on Orry's part.

There would be more to come, if he could judge from the last letter from Fraser's. It had been stamped with a crude wood-block indicia reading PAID 5¢. It was a splendid example of the annoying little matters of nationhood left over once the shouting stopped. The regular federal service had gone on handling Southern mail right through June first. But now a new Confederate postmaster was scrambling to create an organization and, presumably, print stamps. Till some showed up, states and municipalities produced their own.

Fraser's had owed him a refund from a past transaction. They had sent partial payment in the form of new Confederate bills, all very pretty and bucolic with their engravings of a goddess of agriculture and cheerful Negroes working a cotton field. The bills bore a line of tiny type reading Southern Bank Note Co. The letter from Fraser's commented, 'The bills are printed in N.Y. — don't ask us how.' A clever man could have deduced it from the one-thousand-dollar note enclosed. It carried portraits of John Calhoun and Andrew Jackson. Obviously the damnfool Yankees who designed the bill hadn't read history or heard of nullification.

Cities were printing paper money, too. Orry's representative at Fraser's had enclosed a sample — a bizarre Corporation of Richmond bill bearing a heroic portrait of the governor on pink paper in the denomination of fifty cents. Few secessionists had bothered their addled heads about practical consequences of the deed.

'Orry — oh, Orry — such news!'

Madeline burst into the office, picked up her crinoline-stiffened skirt, and did a wholly uncharacteristic dance around the room while he recovered from his surprise. She was giggling — giggling — while she jigged. Tears ran down her face and caught the dark red light.

'I shouldn't be happy — God will strike me dead — but I am. I am!'

'Madeline, what —?'

'Maybe He'll forgive me this once.' She pressed an index finger beneath her nose but still couldn't stop