He was a good fisherman. Having dangled the bait in front of Lee, he fell silent and let him paint his own mental pictures: Mary free of pain; Mary hurrying toward him, upright and happy and out of the prison of her wheeled chair; Mary whirling with him as an orchestra played a sprightly waltz. Had Rhoodie spoken of Mary before he crassly threatened with the nitroglycerine pills, Lee knew he would have been tempted as, perhaps, never before in his life. He was more vulnerable through his family than through any danger aimed at himself, for their well-being was more important to him than his own.
Now he waited until his words were properly deployed before he committed them to battle: “You had better go, Mr. Rhoodie.”
He felt fury like a fire inside him. Most men quailed from him when he let that anger show. Andries Rhoodie, however, was an ironclad himself. He scowled back at Lee. “You think America Will Break will let you get by with your insolence forever, because we tolerated you more than we should have, back when the Confederate States still had the North to beat. We needed you then. But now the Confederacy is well established. If you try to twist it out of its proper course, America Will Break will break you.”
“And what, in your doubtlessly omniscient opinion, is our proper course, pray tell?”
The Rivington man ignored the heavy sarcasm. He answered as if the question were seriously meant: “The one for which you left the useless Union, of course: to preserve the South as a place where the white man can enjoy his natural superiority over the nigger, to show the world the truth of that superiority, and, at need, to act in the future in concert with other nations to preserve it.”
“Ah, now we come down to it,” Lee said. “You are saying that unless we serve as your obedient cat’s-paws in some time to come, we fail of our purpose—our purpose to you, that is. Mr. Rhoodie, our reasons for leaving the United States were more complex than those you name, and if we fought to gain our independence from them, we shall do likewise as necessary against you and yours. And I warn you, sir, that if you speak to me of this matter again, I shall not be responsible for my actions. Now get out of my sight.”
Andries Rhoodie stood up, dug in his pocket, and tossed an old, worn half cent on the desk in front of Lee. “This is how much I care for whether you’ll be responsible for your actions.” He tramped out of the office, slammed the door behind him.
Lee glared in shocked outrage. Had he been Bedford Forrest, Rhoodie never would have got out of Mechanic’s Hall alive. But Forrest and Rhoodie were allies. Lee’s heart thudded heavily in his chest. As had become his habit, he reached for his pills. He had the vial in his hand before he consciously noticed from whom it had come. With an angry growl, he put it back in his waistcoat pocket. His first thought was Better to die without the Rivington men than live with their cures.
He wondered if that also held true for the Confederacy as a whole. He thought about it seriously, then shook his head. His nation deserved to be free. For that matter, how could a good and effective medicine be morally wrong, no matter where it came from? He took out the pills again, let one melt under his tongue. While he had them, he would use them. When they were gone, he would do without, as he had until the Rivington men found their way into his life.
There, that was one decision made, he thought with some satisfaction as he replaced the nitroglycerine tablets once more. “One?” he said aloud. Then he realized that, as in the heat of battle, he had made up his mind without understanding how or even when he’d done so.
He would seek the Presidency next year. That the men of America Will Break did not want him to have it was reason enough, and more.
“How are you tonight, dear Mary?” he asked in the quiet of their bedroom after he’d helped her upstairs that evening. Down below, Mildred was playing the piano and singing with her sisters. Most nights, he would have stayed down there and sung with them, but his mind remained full of Andries Rhoodie.
“I am as I am—none too well, but very much here. And how are you, Robert?” Few people could have followed Lee’s thoughts, but after more than a third of a century, his wife was one of them. She went on, “Something new is troubling you, or I miss my guess, while I have only my usual collection of aches and pains.”
“Troubling me indeed.” As exactly as he could, Lee recounted the confrontation with Rhoodie.
Mary Custis Lee bristled indignantly when he told how the Rivington man had promised to cut off his supply of pills. Lee could almost see her hair rise under her ruffled nightcap. Then he had to tell her Rhoodie had offered to restore her health. Candlelight filled the lines of her face with deep shadows as she cocked her head to one side to study him. Slowly, she asked, “Could he have—cured me, Robert?”
“I do not know,” he answered. After a moment, he reluctantly added, “I confess I have not known the Rivington men to make false claims. However big their brags, they have a way of backing them up.”
“What…what did you tell him?”
“I told him to get out of my office and never come back,” Lee said. “Can you find it in your heart to forgive me for that?”
His wife did not reply, not right away. Instead, she looked down at herself, at the shrunken, twisted legs that had once been so lively, at the pain-filled flesh that had imprisoned her spirit for so many years. At last she said, “I am not surprised at it. I’ve known all our lives together that you place your country ahead of everything else. I understand that; I am used it it; I have taken it as an article of faith since the day you set the ring on my finger, and I dare say before that.”
“Then you do forgive me?” he said in glad relief.
“I do not,” she answered sharply. “I understand. I can even accept; you would not be the man you are, had you said yes to Rhoodie. I would no more have expected you to say yes than that the sun would shine green tomorrow. But sometimes I wish you had even an ounce of bend in you.”
“Do you want me to visit Rhoodie in his headquarters? He would receive me, I think, despite the harsh words that lie between us.”
“You say now that you would go to him.” Her hands brushed the notion aside with a quick, scornful gesture. “Surely your precious duty would find. some way of coming between the words and the deed.”
He wanted to be angry at her for that cynical gibe, but could not: she was too likely right. Already he regretted his rash offer: how could he sell the Confederacy for the sake of one person’s comfort, even if that person was his wife? He knew he could not, and knew she would pay the price for his not doing so, Sighing, he said, “I unfortunately belong to a profession that debars all hope of domestic enjoyment.”
“You have been wed to that profession, and to your country, longer and more deeply than ever to me,” Mary Custis Lee said, which was also true.
He said, “I am not necessarily wed to that profession forever.” His wife, taking a wifely privilege, laughed at him.
Richmond, Virginia
June 27, 1866
Sir:
I have the honour to tender the resignation of my commission as general in the army of the Confederate States of America.
Very resply your obt servt,
R. E. Lee
General, C.S.A.
Lee sanded the letter dry, looked down at the words he had written. Even in black ink on creamy white paper, they did not yet seem real to him, just as there was a moment of quiet shock before the pain of a wound struck home. Yet this resignation came easier than the one he had made six years before, from the colonelcy of the 1st U.S. Cavalry. Then he had been cruelly divided in his own spirit, wishing he could remain with the United States but knowing Virginia in the end meant more to him. Now the Confederacy was at peace; its armies could carry on without him. His course lay elsewhere.