“It has not sheltered me from those,” she admitted. “Except for a matter of numbers. And I am not sure one feels any less for one person, if he or she is in desperate trouble, than one does for many.”
“Quite.” It was Robert Casbolt who spoke. He came up just behind Alberton, putting a companionable hand on his friend’s shoulder and regarding Hester with interest. “There is just so much the emotions can take, and one gives all one has, I imagine? From what I have just overheard, you are a remarkable woman, Mrs. Monk. I am delighted Daniel thought to invite you and your husband to dine. You will enliven our usual conversation greatly, and I for one am looking forward to it.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “No doubt we shall hear more of it over dinner—it is totally inescapable these days—but I have had more than sufficient of the war in America and its issues.”
Alberton’s face lightened. “So have I, but I would wager you a good carriage and pair that Breeland will regale us again with the virtues of the Union before the third course has been served.”
“Second!” Casbolt amended. He grinned at Hester, a broad, shining expression. “He is a very earnest young man, Mrs. Monk, and fanatically convinced of the moral rightness of his cause. To him the Union of the United States is a divine entity, and the Confederate desire to secede the work of the devil.”
Any further comment was cut short by the necessity of removing to the dining room, where dinner was ready to be served.
Monk found the house pleasing although he was not certain why. It was something to do with warmth of color and simplicity of proportion. He had spent the earlier part of the evening talking with Casbolt and Judith Alberton, with the occasional comment from Lyman Breeland, who seemed to find light conversation tedious. Breeland was too well mannered to show it overtly, but Monk at least knew that he was bored. He wondered why Breeland had come at all. It excited Monk’s curiosity. Looking around the room, including himself and Hester, it seemed an oddly disparate group of people. Breeland appeared to be in his early thirties, a year or two younger than Hester. The rest of them must have been in their middle to later forties, apart from Merrit Alberton. Why had she chosen to attend this dinner when she could surely have been in the company of other young girls, if not at a party?
Yet he saw in her no sign of tedium or impatience. Was she remarkably well mannered, or was there something which drew her here by choice?
The answer came at the end of the soup course and as the fish was served.
“Where do you live in America, Mr. Breeland?” Hester asked innocently.
“Our home is in Connecticut, ma’am,” he replied, ignoring his food and gazing at her steadily. “But at present we are in Washington, of course. People are coming in from all over the northern part of the Union to gather to the cause, as no doubt you know.” He raised his level eyebrows very slightly.
Casbolt and Alberton glanced at each other, and away again.
“We are fighting for the survival of an ideal of freedom and liberty for all men,” Breeland continued emphatically. “Volunteers are pouring in from every town and city and from the farms even far inland and to the west.”
Merrit’s face was suddenly alight. She looked for a moment at Breeland, her eyes shining, then back to Hester. “When they win, there will be no more slavery,” she proclaimed. “All men will be free to come and go as they choose, to call no man master. It will be one of the greatest and noblest steps mankind has taken, and they will do it even at the cost of their lives, their homes, whatever it takes.”
“War is usually at that cost, Miss Alberton,” Hester answered quietly. “Whatever the cause of it.”
“But this is different!” Merrit’s voice rose urgently. She leaned forward a little over the exquisite china and silver, the light from the chandeliers gleaming on her pale shoulders. “This is true nobility and sacrifice for a great ideal. It is a struggle to preserve those liberties for which America was founded. If you really understood it all, Mrs. Monk, you would be as passionate in its defense as the Union supporters are … unless, of course, you believe in slavery?” There was no anger in her, just bewilderment that anyone should do such a thing.
“No, I don’t believe in slavery!” Hester said fiercely. She looked neither to right nor left to see what other people’s feelings might be. “I find the whole idea abhorrent.”
Merrit relaxed and her face flooded with a beautiful smile. An instant warmth radiated from her. “Then you will understand completely. Don’t you agree we should do all we can to help such a cause, when other men are willing to give their lives?” Again her eyes flickered momentarily to Breeland, and he smiled back at her, a faint flush of pleasure in his cheeks, and he looked away again, perhaps self-consciously, as if guarding his emotion.
Hester was more guarded. “I certainly agree we should fight against slavery, but I am not sure that this is the way to do it. I confess, I don’t know sufficient about the issue to make a judgment.”
“It is simple enough,” Merrit replied, “when you cut away the political quarrels and the matters of land and money, and are left with nothing but the morality.” She waved her hand and, without realizing it, blocked the way of the footman trying to serve the entree. “It is a matter of being honest.” Again the lovely smile transformed her face. “If you were to ask Mr. Breeland, he would explain the matter to you so you would be able to see it with such clarity you would burn to fight the cause with all your heart.”
Monk looked across to see how Daniel Alberton felt about this intense loyalty in his daughter to a war five thousand miles away. There was a weariness in his host’s face which told of many such discussions, and no resolution.
Newspapers in London carried many stories about Mr. Lincoln, the new president, and of Jefferson Davis, who had been elected president of the provisional government of the Confederate States of America, those states that had broken away from the Union one by one over the last several months. For a long time many had hoped to avoid outright war, while others actively encouraged it. But with the bombardment of Fort Sumter by the Confederates, and its subsequent surrender on April 14, President Lincoln had asked for seventy-five thousand volunteers to serve for a period of three months, and proposed a blockade of all Confederate ports.
Newspapers suggested that the South had called for a hundred and fifty thousand volunteers. America was now at war.
What was far less obvious was the nature of the issues at stake. To some, like Merrit, it was simply about slavery. In reality it appeared to Monk to have at least as much to do with land, economics and the right of the South to secede from a Union it no longer wished to be part of.
Indeed, much sympathy in Britain lay with the South, although the motives for that were also mixed, and perhaps suspect.
Alberton’s patient tones came with an effort which for an instant was naked in his face.
