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 He would have broken her wrist or fingers if she hadn't withdrawn her hand quickly.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 steamed into Port Royal Sound and opened fire on Hilton Head Island. The bombardment from Du Pont's gunboats sent the small Confederate garrison retreating to the mainland before the sun set. Two days later, nearby, the historic little port of Beaufort fell. There came reports of burning and looting of white homes by rapacious Yankee soldiers and revengeful blacks.
Each day brought new rumors. Arson would soon raze Charleston, which would be replaced by a city for black fugitives; Harriet Tubman was in the state, or coming to the state, or thinking about coming to the state, to urge slaves to run or revolt; for failure in western Virginia, Lee had been banished to command the new Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and East Florida.
The last proved true. Unexpectedly, the famous soldier and three of his senior staff appeared on horseback in the lane of Mont Royal one twilight. They spent an hour with Orry in the parlor before riding on to Yemassee.
Orry had met Lee once, in Mexico; yet because of the man's reputation, both military and personal, he felt he knew him well. What a jolt, then, to confront the visitor and find he no longer resembled his published portraits. Lee was fifty-four or fifty-five, but his seamed face, shadowed eyes, white-streaked beard, and general air of strain made him appear much older. Orry had never seen a picture of Lee with a beard, and said so.
"Oh, I brought this back from the Cheat Mountain campaign," Lee said. "Along with a portfolio of nicknames I'd be happier to discard." His staff men laughed, but the mirth was forced. "How is your cousin, young Charles?"
"He's well, the last I heard. He enlisted with the Hampton Legion. I'm surprised you remember him."
"Impossible to forget him. While I was superintendent, he was the best rider I saw at the Academy."
Lee fell to discussing the point of his visit. He wanted Orry to accept the commission in Richmond, even though he was no longer headquartered there and could not employ him directly. "You can be of great service to the War Department, however. It isn't true, as the backbiters would have it, that President Davis constantly interferes or that he's the person who actually runs the department." Lee paused. "It is not completely true, I mean to say."
"I plan to go as soon as I can, General. I've just been awaiting the arrival of a new overseer to run the place. He's due any day."
"Good news. Splendid! You and every West Point man like you are of infinite value to the army and the conduct of the war. The great failing of Mr. Davis, if I may in confidence suggest one, is his belief that there's nothing wrong with secession. Perhaps in the South there is not. In Washington, I assure you, they consider it treason. I am not enough of a constitutionalist to state positively that the act was illegal, but I consider it a blunder whose magnitude is only now being perceived. But no matter what personal feelings you or any of us have about secession, one of its consequences is immutable. We shall have to win our right to it — our right to exist as a separate nation. When I say win, I am speaking of military victory. Mr. Davis, regrettably, believes the right will be awarded us if we merely press our claim rhetorically. That is the dream of an idealist. Laudable, perhaps, but a dream. What we did was heinous to a majority of our former countrymen. Only force of arms will gain and hold independence. Academy men will understand and fight the war as it must be fought, unless we plan to quit or be defeated."
"Fight," one of the staff men growled. Orry nodded to agree.
"That's the proper spirit," Lee said, rising; his knees creaked. He shook Orry's hand, passed a social moment on the piazza with Madeline, then rode away to the duties of his obscure command. Orry put his arm around his wife and pulled her against him in the chill of the darkening sky. Parting was inevitable now. It hurt to think of it.
Next morning, further news came. Nine blacks from Francis LaMotte's plantation had used basket boats, woven in secret, to float down the Ashley on the ebb tide. They had abandoned the boats above Charleston and fled south, presumably to the Union lines around Beaufort.
Along with that report, the day brought the overseer from North Carolina, Philemon Meek, mounted on a mule.
Orry's first reaction was disappointment. He had expected a man in his sixties, but not someone with the stoop and demeanor of an aged schoolmaster; Meek even wore half-glasses down near the tip of his nose.
Orry interviewed Meek for an hour in the library, and the impression began to change. Meek answered his new employer's questions tersely but honestly. When he didn't know or understand something, he said so. He told Orry that he didn't believe in harsh discipline unless slaves brought it on themselves. Orry replied that, except for Cuffey and one or two others, few at Mont Royal were troublemakers.
Meek then made clear that he was a religious man. He owned and read only one book, the Scriptures. Any kind of reading was hard for him, he admitted, which perhaps contributed to his strongly stated opinion that secular books, and especially fiction, were satanically inspired. Orry made no comment. It wasn't an unusual attitude among the devout.