"Yes, we've worked out the details," Madeline told him. "Andy, this is Aunt Belle Nin and her niece, Jane." She described the bargain she had struck with them.
"All right," Andy said. Taken with the girl, the young driver smiled in his friendliest way. Madeline felt sorry for him. The girl was in love with an idea.
"Mr. Orry says you have a wagon," Andy continued. "I'll drive you to the cabin."
"Pick up some barbecue in the kitchen," Orry said. "You two are probably hungry."
"Starved," the tiny octoroon said. "I don't know you, Mr. Main, but you're beginning to sound like a good Christian person, too."
As the wagon proceeded slowly to the slave community, Andy peeked over his shoulder at Jane. When he had first approached the kitchen porch and saw her there, gathering and reflecting the orange light, he had caught his breath in wonder. He had never set eyes on anyone more beautiful.
He worked up courage to say, "You speak mighty well, Miss Jane. Can you read?"
"And write," she replied from the wagon bed, where she sat with Aunt Belle's legs resting on top of hers. "I can cipher, too. A year before Mrs. Milsom died, she knew she was going and started to teach me."
"That was against the law."
"She said the devil with the law. She was a feisty old lady. She said I had to be ready to make my way alone." The mule plodded; the axle creaked. "Can you read and write?"
"No." Then, desperate to make a good impression, he blurted, "I'd like to know how, though. Yes, indeed. A man can't better himself unless he has learning."
"And a man can't better himself when he's the property of —" Aunt Belle whacked her niece's wrist with her fingers. Jane looked chastened as she finished, "I'd be happy to give you lessons, but I couldn't do it without asking Mrs. Main's permission."
"Maybe we could do that sometime."
"Let's eat first," Aunt Belle said irritably. "Let's remember who needs attention here, is that all right?"
"Just fine," Andy said, jubilant.
The wagon rolled into the lane between the slave cottages. At the gnarled base of a mammoth live oak rising between two of them, Cuffey sat with his spine against the bark, a twig in his teeth, and his right hand down between his legs, scratching lazily. Spying the unfamiliar girl in the wagon, he sat up. He had heard nothing about purchase of any new slaves. Who was she? He surely wanted to find out.
Giving a nasty glance at Andy, who paid no attention, Cuffey watched the wagon pass. His eyes returned to the lush line of the girl's bosom, and his hand grew busier in his crotch.
In bed, naked beneath a comforter, Orry said, "I liked that little nigra girl. Peppery; just like the old woman. But I have a feeling you can trust her to keep her word."
"I wouldn't have let her stay otherwise," Madeline touched him. "Everything will be fine. Let's not spend your last night worrying that it won't."
"Lord, I'm going to miss you these next two or three months."
"Show me how much."
In the morning, in a hat and frock coat and cravat suitable for a funeral, Orry kissed his vaguely smiling mother. "Thank you for visiting, sir. Do come again, won't you?" she said.
As he kissed his wife she held him fiercely, whispering: "God keep you safe, dearest. One day when I was small, a moment came when I suddenly understood the meaning of the word death. I started crying and ran to my father. He took me in his arms and said I shouldn't let it frighten me too much, because we all shared the predicament. He said it eased the mind and heart to remember we are all dying of life. It took me years to understand and believe him. I do, but — I don't want it to happen to you any sooner than necessary. Life's become too sweet."
"Don't worry," he reassured her. "We'll be together before long. And I don't think anyone fires at officers who sit behind desks."
He kissed and embraced her once more and went away down the lane, with Aristotle driving.
41
Certain American civilians remembered that two of the chief destroyers of the British Army in the Crimea were dirt and disease. Not long after Sumter fell, these civilians decided to prevent, if they could, a repetition in the Union encampments of those mistakes of half a dozen years ago and half a world away.
As soon as the plan became public, army surgeons began to scoff and call the civilians meddling amateurs. So did most government officials. The civilians persisted, forming the United States Sanitary Commission. By midsummer, the organization had a chief executive, Frederick Law Olmsted, the man who had designed New York City's Central Park in 1856 and described slavery in unfavorable terms in a widely read travel memoir.
Lincoln and the War Department didn't want to sanction the commission but were forced to do so because important people were connected with it, including Mr. Bache, a grandson of Ben Franklin, and Samuel Gridley Howe, the famous Boston doctor and humanitarian. Even after official recognition, members didn't forgive the President for saying they were a fifth wheel on the coach.
Whether the nay-sayers liked it or not, the commission intended to supply soldiers with items they lacked and to police the camps and hospitals to keep them clean. Some of the opposition to this work softened after Bull Run; sixteen commission wagons had driven there to bring out wounded when most of the Union soldiers were fleeing the other way.
The commission recruited and united great masses of women all across the North, giving focus and direction to volunteer work that had been largely individual during the early weeks of the war. In Lehigh Station, as elsewhere, ladies organized the first of many Sanitary Fairs to raise money and gather goods for the organization.
While Scipio Brown was bringing the rest of his waifs to the newly expanded building and settling them in with a Hungarian couple hired to supervise the place, Constance was busy planning a Sanitary Fair for the second Friday and Saturday in November. The site was Hazard's shipping and receiving warehouse down by the railroad tracks beside the canal.
Wotherspoon kept crews working two days and nights to clear the building by loading huge shipments of iron plate onto a series of special trains. Virgilia helped as a committee member and so did Brett, who justified it on two grounds: her husband was a Union officer and, even if he weren't, humanitarian concerns in this case outweighed partisan ones. The ultimate aim of the fair and the commission was the saving of lives. Brett's real problem in connection with the fair was working with Virgilia. It was difficult.
From the first hour, the fair was a success, drawing huge crowds from the valley. Great loops of patriotic bunting decorated the walls and rafters of the warehouse. The most popular display featured posed photographs of some of the brave boys of Colonel Tilghman Good's Forty-seventh Pennsylvania Volunteers, the valley's own regiment, together with a greatly enlarged newspaper likeness of General McClellan. The sketch artist for the local paper exhibited satiric portraits of Slidell and Mason, the reb commissioners to Europe who had been dragged off the British mail packet Trent early in the month; the pair was presently imprisoned in Boston, which outraged the Queen's government and provoked threats from Lord Lyons, British minister in Washington.
There were military exhibits — stacked arms, contents of a typical haversack, an authentic canteen authentically pierced by a ball — and booths for collection of food, reading material, and clothing. Virgilia manned the clothing booth. A committee member had somehow obtained a regulation army tunic of dark blue shoddy, from which small squares had been cut. Every fifteen minutes, Virgilia would gather a crowd, then conduct her demonstration. Holding a square of shoddy over a bowl, she poured water on the material. The shoddy disintegrated into little pellets, which she distributed to the outraged spectators, coupling this with a request for decent clothing to be deposited in the barrels provided.