She heard the carriage grind to a halt. A few moments later, the woman in the gray traveling dress with matching hat and gloves stepped into the doorway. Madeline's exhausted face drained of color.
"My God, Virgilia."
"Hello, Madeline." The two women stared at one another, Virgilia uncertain of her reception. Charles clumped in from the bedroom, where he'd taken down a framed lithograph of the Plain at West Point. He nearly dropped it when he saw the visitor. Of course he remembered her, principally from her visit to Mont Royal with George and others in her family.
She was a fire-spitting abolitionist in those days. She flaunted a superior morality, and a hatred of all things Southern. He recalled Virgilia outraging her host, Tillet Main, the day James Huntoon came to accuse her of aiding the escape of Huntoon's slave Grady. She'd later lived with the runaway in the North.
Charles particularly recalled her proud, insulting admission of guilt that day. He had trouble reconciling the old Virgilia with this one. He remembered a vicious tongue; now she was soft-spoken. He remembered a slimmer girl; now she was stout. He remembered a careless wardrobe; now she was conservatively fashionable, and tidy despite her long journey. He remembered her with one chin, not two, and it was all a keen reminder of time's passage. In her case, time had dealt kindly.
"How have you been, Charles?" she said. "The last time we saw one another, you were a very young man."
Still bewildered, Madeline remembered her manners. "Won't you sit down, Virgilia?"
"Yes, thank you. I'm rather tired. I sat up on the train all the way from Washington." She removed her gloves. On the ring finger of her left hand she wore a diamond in a white gold setting.
Madeline cleared a few stacked books from a chair and gestured the visitor to it. Charles lighted a lamp while introducing Willa. Madeline seemed nervous, on the verge of crying. He presumed it was because Virgilia's arrival was one unexpected event too many. Emotions were strained in the whitewashed house. Pointless arguments had broken out several times during the past few days.
Virgilia said, "I'd like to stay a day or two, if you'll permit me. I'm here because George's attorney telegraphed me about Ashton. We must find some way to undo what she's done."
Madeline knotted her apron in her red-knuckled hands. "We have no room here, Virgilia. I'm afraid the best we can offer would be a pallet in the home of one of the freedmen."
"Perfectly adequate," Virgilia said. She radiated a crisp cordiality, and an air of city sophistication. Charles couldn't get over the change.
"Please don't think me rude" — Madeline cleared her throat — "but I just don't understand."
Virgilia rescued her from the embarrassing silence. "Why I am here after all that happened years ago? Very simple. Once I cared nothing for my family, or my brother's feelings. Now I care a great deal. I know George's high regard for you and Orry, and this place he enjoyed visiting so much. I had opinions that wouldn't allow me to enjoy Mont Royal. I offer no apology for them. I think they were correct, but that's past. I know George would help you financially if that would resolve matters in your favor. Since it won't, and he's still somewhere on the Atlantic, I'd like to help in some other way if I can. I've changed many of my opinions but not my opinion of Ashton. She always impressed me as a shallow, spiteful creature. Especially unkind to the black men and women her father owned."
"She hasn't changed much," Charles said. He raked a match on his boot sole and then puffed on his cigar. "I'm afraid it doesn't matter a damn what any one of us thinks. This place is hers. Come Friday, we have to get out or she'll have the law on us."
Virgilia's old militancy asserted itself. "That is a defeatist attitude."
"Well, if you've got reason for any other kind, you tell me," he snarled.
Madeline whispered, "Charles."
Virgilia's gentle gesture of dismissal said she wasn't offended. Willa said, "There's a bit of claret left. Perhaps our guest would like a glass while I fix some supper.".
None of them seemed to know what to say next. The uncomfortable silence went on and on, until Charles walked out. They heard him calling to his son.
On Thursday, Virgilia asked Charles to stroll down to the river with her. It was a steamy, sunless day, a perfect reflection of their spirits. Charles didn't want to go, but Willa said he must. To what purpose, he didn't know.
The sawmill had stopped work on Tuesday. Its employees awaited the pleasure of the new owner. On the mill dock by the smooth and placid Ashley, Virgilia walked among stacks of rough-cut cypress lumber.
"Charles, I know that for many years I wasn't very popular with the Mains, and justifiably so. I hope you believe I've changed."
Hands on hips, he gazed at the river. He shrugged to say it was a possibility, but only a possibility.
"All right, then. Do you think we might form an alliance?"
He scrutinized her. "We make a pretty unlikely pair."
"Granted."
"What kind of alliance?"
"One dedicated to defeating that vile woman."
"There isn't any way."
"I refuse to believe that, Charles."
Suddenly he laughed and relaxed. "I heard a lot of stories about you years ago, Miss Hazard —"
She touched the full sleeve of his loose cotton shirt. He noticed her hand —blunt-fingered, work-roughened. "Virgilia," she said.
"Well, all right, Virgilia. I guess if you take all the spite out of those stories, what's left is true. You're about as tough as one of my cavalry sergeants." Hastily then: "I mean that as a compliment."
"Of course," she said, with a wry smile. She was pensive a few moments. "We have twenty-four hours."
"I suppose I could shoot her, but I don't want to go to prison, and it wouldn't solve anything. The plantation would just go to this piano merchant she's apparently hitched up with." He sighed. "Wish I could put the calendar back a week or so. Before the sale I might have been able to scare her off. When I was a trader in the Indian Territory, I had a partner who taught me that fear was a powerful weapon."
Virgilia's interest was piqued. "Wait. Perhaps you've hit on something. Tell me about this partner of yours."
He described Wooden Foot Jackson and some of their experiences. Then he remembered the incident involving the false travois sign, which he described.
"Wooden Foot said fear was so powerful that it would trick you into seeing what you expected, instead of what was really there. I proved it. I saw a whole village in those tracks." He shrugged again. He could draw no practical conclusion from the story.
Surprisingly, it excited Virgilia. She whirled around at the edge of the pier. "What you expect instead of what's real — I find that very provocative, Charles. Now tell me more about Ashton. Naturally you've seen her —"
He nodded. "She's older, like all of us. Still dresses like a bird of paradise. I don't know what life's like in Chicago, but she must take good care of herself. She's still a beauty. No change there, either."
He found Virgilia staring with an intensity that puzzled him. She grasped his arm. "Will you go with me to Charleston this afternoon? I must find an apothecary."
He was astonished, but too polite to question her. A half hour later, alone with Willa, he said, "My God, did she fool me. She said she was here to help us. Instead, we have to chase down an apothecary. She's probably got some female complaint. I think she's crazy as ever."
On the drive to Charleston, Virgilia explained what she wanted from the apothecary's, and why she wanted it. At first Charles was speechless. Then, slowly, his desperation turned skepticism to an almost euphoric hope. Everything on one throw of the dice.