While I can never abandon my beliefs —'
'No one asks that of you.'
'— I do understand that Brett's entitled to some deference.'
'Not to mention plain everyday courtesy.'
'Certainly. She's become part of the family, and, as you say, she was kind to me. I'll try harder from now on. Still, under the present arrangement, there are bound to be disputes.'
Quietly: 'Since you brought up what you call the present arrangement, suppose we discuss it.'
Virgilia nodded. 'I know that my grace period here is running out. I'm anxious to leave. Anxious to get back into the stream of things. I don't know how. Where can I go to earn a livelihood? What can I do when I have no training and very little education in practical things?'
Virgilia slowly walked to the parlor window. A shower was in progress. Rain clung to the glass, casting patterns on her face like new pox scars. In a small, sad voice, she said, 'Those are the questions I've never had to ask before. To wait for answers that don't come is frightening, Constance.'
She stared into the rain. Constance thought,
Two points clarified themselves as a result of the brief conversation. Virgilia had to leave Belvedere before George discovered her presence or Brett, goaded to anger, told him. But she was incapable of finding her way alone, so part of that burden, too, fell on Constance.
39
In late October, Mrs. Burdetta Halloran of Richmond was a woman distressed.
Two years a childless widow, she was thirty-three, statuesque, with gorgeous auburn hair, a stunning derriere, and breasts that were, in her opinion, merely adequate. But the package had been sufficiently enchanting to captivate the wine merchant who had wed her when she was twenty-one. Sixteen years her senior, Halloran had died of heart failure while struggling to satisfy her strong sexual appetites.
Poor fellow, she had liked him well enough, even though he lacked the technique and stamina to keep her happy physically. He had treated her well, however, and she had only cuckolded him twice: the first liaison had lasted four days, the second a single night. His passing had left her in comfortable circumstances — or she had thought so until this wretched war came.
Today, when the rest of the town was euphoric about a victory at some spot near the Potomac called Ball's Bluff, she was upset by her tour of retail stores. Prices were climbing. Her pound of bacon had cost fifty cents, her pound of coffee an outrageous dollar and a half. Only last week the freedman who supplied her from the country with stove and firewood had announced that he wanted eight dollars for the next cord, not five. With such inflation, she would not long survive in her accustomed style.
Born a Soames — the family went back four generations in the Old Dominion — she deplored all the changes in her city, her state, and in the social order. Bob Lee, finest of the fine, was being mocked with the name 'Granny' because of his military failures; she had heard he would soon be shipped to one of the benighted military districts of the cotton South.
Queen Varina was outraging members of local society by forming a court made up chiefly of those who were not. Oh, Joe Johnston's wife belonged, but Burdetta Halloran suspected she did so to advance her husband's career; she certainly had nothing in common with the rest of the upstarts who surrounded and influenced the First Lady: Mrs. Mallory, a flaming papist; Mrs. Wigfall, a vulgar Texan; Mrs. Chesnut, a Carolina bitch. Beneath contempt, every one. Yet they were favored.
The city was too crowded. Harlots and speculators poured off every arriving train. Hordes of niggers, many undoubtedly fugitives, swelled the mobs of idlers in the streets. Captured Yankees filled the improvised prisons, like Liggon's Tobacco Factory at Twenty-fifth and Main. Their unprecedented arrogance and contempt for all things Southern outraged solid citizens like Burdetta Halloran, who courageously bore the cross of Jeff Davis and spent every free hour knitting socks and more socks for the troops.
She had stopped knitting two weeks ago, when her distress reached crisis proportions. This afternoon, covertly nipping on whiskey from a flask in a crocheted cozy, she was traveling in a hack to Church Hill. She had been contemplating the visit for days. Sleeplessness and mounting despair had finally pushed her to act.
The hack slowed. She sipped again, then hid the covered flask in her bag. 'Shall I wait?' the driver asked after he parked near the corner of Twenty-fourth. Some dismal premonition caused Mrs. Halloran to nod.
She darted along the walk and up the stoop, so nervous she nearly fell. She had drunk the liquor for courage, but it only dulled her mind and sharpened her anxiety. She raised the knocker and let it fall.
Her heart beat hurtfully. The slanting October light foretold winter — sadness and loneliness. God, wasn't he here? She knocked again, harder and longer.
The door opened six inches. She nearly fainted from happiness. Then she looked more closely at her lover. His hair was uncombed, and a wedge of skin showed between sagging lapels of claret velvet. A dressing gown at this hour?
At first she assumed he was ill. Soon she realized the truth and the extent of her stupidity.
'Burdetta.' There was no surprise and no welcome in the way he said her name. Nor did he open the door wider.
'Lamar, you haven't answered a single one of my letters.'
'I thought you'd understand the significance of silence.'
'Dear Lord, you don't mean — you wouldn't simply cast me out — not after six months of unbelievable —'
'This is an embarrassment,' he said, his voice lower and hard as his instrument when he took her in various ways, satiating her only after four or five hours. His eyes shunted past her to the curious hackman on his high seat. 'For both of us.'
'Who have you got now? Some young slut? Is she inside?' She sniffed. 'My God, you have. You must have soaked in her perfume.' Tears filled her eyes. She extended her hand through the opening. 'Darling, at least let me come in. Talk this out. If I've wronged or offended you —'
'Pull your hand back, Burdetta,' he said, smiling. 'Otherwise you'll get hurt. I'm going to shut the door.'
'You unspeakable bastard.' Her whisper had no effect; the sun-splashed door began to close. He would have broken her wrist or fingers if she hadn't withdrawn her hand quickly. The door clicked. Six months of risking her reputation, of performing every conceivable wickedness for him, and this was how it ended? With indifference? With the sort of dismissal a man would give a whore?
Burdetta Soames Halloran had been schooled in Southern graces, which included courage and the maintenance of poise in the face of social disaster. Although it would take days or weeks to compose her emotions — Lamar Powell had spoken to some animalistic side of her, and she had never loved any man more or more completely — it took less than ten seconds for her to compose her face. When she turned and carefully stepped down the first tall riser, her hoops raised in her gloved hands, she was smiling.
'Ready?' the hackman asked, unnecessarily, since she was waiting for him to jump and open the door.
'Yes, I am. It required only a moment to conclude my business.'
In fact, she had only begun it.
40
Turmoil swept the Carolina coast that autumn. On the seventh of November, Commodore Du Pont's flotilla
