“I daresay it is my fault.” Casbolt looked at Trace and shrugged very slightly. “It was I who last spoke to you about it. I may have given the wrong date. If I did, I am sorry. It was most careless of me.” He turned to Judith, then to Monk and Hester.
“It is quite all right,” Monk said quickly, and he meant it. The friction between Trace and Breeland was more interesting than a blander party might have been, but of course he could not say so.
“Thank you,” Casbolt said warmly. “Shall you and I remain here while the ladies retire to the withdrawing room and Daniel and Mr. Trace conduct their business?”
“By all means,” Monk accepted.
Casbolt looked at the port bottle nestling in its basket, and the sparkling glasses waiting for it, and grinned broadly.
Judith led Hester and Merrit through to the withdrawing room again. The curtains were still open and the last of the evening light still bathed the tops of the trees in a warm apricot glow. An aspen shimmered as the sunset breeze turned its leaves, glittering one moment, smooth the next.
“I am so sorry for the intrusion of this miserable war in America,” Judith said ruefully. “It seems we can’t escape from it at the moment.”
Merrit stood very straight, her shoulders squared, staring out of the long windows at the roses across the lawn.
“I don’t think it is morally right that we should try to. I’m sorry if you feel that it is bad manners to say so, but I honestly don’t believe Mrs. Monk is someone who would use manners as an excuse to run away from the truth.” She turned her head to stare at Hester. “She went to the Crimea to care for our soldiers who were sick and injured when she could have stayed here at home and been comfortable and said it was none of her business. If you had been alive at the time, wouldn’t you have campaigned with Wilberforce to end the slave trade through Britain and on the high seas?” There was a challenge directed at Hester, but in spite of the ring in her voice, her eyes were bright, as if she knew the answer.
“Please heaven, I hope so!” Hester said vehemently. “That we even entered into it was one of the blackest pages in all our history. To buy and sell human beings is inexcusable.”
Merrit gave her a beautiful smile, then turned to her mother. “I knew it! Why can’t Papa see that? How can he be there in his study actually proposing to sell guns to the Confederacy? The slave states!”
“Because he gave his word to Mr. Trace before Mr. Breeland came here,” Judith replied. “Now please sit down and don’t place Mrs. Monk in the middle of our difficulties. It is quite unfair.” Taking Merrit’s obedience for granted, she turned to Hester. “Sometimes I wish my husband were in a different business. I am not sure if there is anything entirely without contention. Even if you were to sell tin baths or turnips, I daresay there would be someone on your doorstep declaring your demands were unrighteous or prejudicial to somebody else’s livelihood. But armaments arouse more emotions than most other things, and seem to depend upon so many reverses of fortune that cannot be foreseen.”
“Do they?” Hester was surprised. “I would have thought governments at least could see the probability of war long before it became inevitable.”
“Oh, usually, but there are times when it comes right out of nowhere at all,” Judith replied. “Naturally my husband, and Mr. Casbolt as well, study the affairs of the world very closely. But there are events that take everyone by surprise. The Third Chinese War just last year was a perfect example.”
Hester had no knowledge of it, and it must have been clear in her face.
Judith laughed. “It was all part of the Opium Wars we have with the Chinese every so often, but this one took everybody by surprise. Although how the Second Chinese War began was the most absurd. Apparently there was a schooner called
“What?” Hester said in amazement. “I mean … I beg your pardon?”
“Precisely,” Judith agreed wryly. “We took offense, and used it as a pretext to start a minor war. The French discovered that a French missionary had been executed by the Chinese a few months before that, so they joined in as well. When the war finished various treaties were signed and we felt it safe to resume business with the Chinese as usual.” She grimaced. “Then quite unexpectedly the Third Chinese War broke out.”
“Does it affect armament sales?” Hester asked. “Surely only to the advantage, at least for the British?”
Judith shook her head very slightly. “Depends upon whom you were selling to! In this instance, not if you were selling to the Chinese, with whom we were going through a period of good relations.”
“Oh … I see.”
“Then perhaps we should be more careful to whom we sell guns?” Merrit said fiercely. “Instead of just to the highest bidder!”
Judith looked for a moment as if she were about to argue, then changed her mind. Hester formed the opinion that her hostess had had some variation of this conversation several times before, and on each of them failed to make any difference. It was eminently none of Hester’s business, and better left alone, yet the impulse in her, which so often Monk told her was arbitrary and opinionated, formed the words on her lips.
“To whom should we sell guns?” she asked with outward candor. “Apart from the Unionists in America, of course.”
Merrit was impervious to sarcasm. She was too idealistic to see any moderation to a cause.
“Where there is no oppression involved,” she said without hesitation. “Where people are fighting for their freedom.”
“Who would you have sold them to in the Indian Mutiny?”
Merrit stared at her.
“The Indians,” Hester answered for her. “But perhaps if you had seen what they had done with them, the massacres of women and children, you might have felt … confused, at the least. I know I am.”
