She'd been crying for an hour, ashamed of it, yet powerless to stop. Now she rushed down the broad lawn under a moon that shone, blinding white, above the trees bordering the Ashley River. At the bank where the pier once jutted out, she disturbed a great white heron. The bird rose and sailed past the full moon.
She turned and gazed back up the lawn at the house among the live oaks bearded with Spanish moss. A vision filled her mind, a vision of the great house in which she and Orry had lived as man and wife. She saw its graceful pillars, lighted windows. She saw carriages drawn up, gentlemen and ladies visiting, laughing.
The idea came then. It made her heart beat so fast it almost hurt. Where the poor whitewashed place stood now, she would build another Mont Royal. A fine great house to endure forever as a memorial to her husband and his goodness, and all that was good about the Main family and its collective past.
In a rush of thought, it came to her that the house must not be an exact replica of the burned mansion. That beauty had represented — hidden — too much that was evil. Although the Mains had been kind to their slaves, they had indisputably kept them as property, thereby endorsing a system that embraced shackles and floggings and death or castration for those rash enough to run away. By war's end, Orry had all but disavowed the system; Cooper, in his younger days, had condemned it openly. Even so, the new Mont Royal must be truly new, for it was a new time. A new age.
Tears welled. Madeline clasped her hands and raised them in the moonlight. "I'll do it somehow. In your honor —"
She saw it clearly, standing again, the phoenix risen from the ashes. Like some pagan priestess, she lifted her head and hands to whatever gods watched from the starry arch of the Carolina night. She spoke to her husband there amid the far stars.
"I swear before heaven, Qrry. I will build it, for you."
A surprise visitor today. Gen. Wade Hampton, on his way home from Charleston. Because of his rank, and his ferocity as a soldier, they say it will be years before any amnesty reaches high enough to include him.
His strength and good disposition astound me. He lost so much — his brother Frank and his son Preston dead in battle, 3,000 slaves gone, and both Millwood and Sand Hills burned by the enemy. He is living in an overseer's shack at Sand Hills, and cannot escape the accusation that he, not Sherman, burned Columbia by firing cotton bales to keep them from the Yankee looters.
Yet he showed no dismay over any of this, expressing, instead, concern for others ...
Outside the pine house, Wade Hampton sat on an upright log that served as a chair. Lee's oldest cavalry commander, forty-seven now, carried himself with a certain stiffness. He'd been wounded in battle five times. Since coming home, he'd shaved his huge beard, leaving only a tuft beneath his mouth, though he still wore his great curving mustaches and side whiskers. Under an old broadcloth coat, he carried an ivory-handled revolver in a holster.
"Laced coffee, General," Madeline said as she emerged into the dappled sunlight with two steaming tin cups. "Sugar and a little corn whiskey — though I'm afraid the coffee is just a brew from parched acorns."
"Welcome all the same." Smiling, Hampton took his cup. Madeline sat down on a crate near a cluster of the trumpet-shaped yellow jasmine she loved.
"I came to inquire about your welfare," he said to her. "Mont Royal is yours now —"
"In a sense, yes. I don't own it."
Hampton raised an eyebrow, and she explained that Tillet Main had left the plantation to his sons, Orry and Cooper, jointly. He had done so despite his long-standing quarrel with Cooper over slavery; at the end, blood ties and tradition had proved stronger in Tillet than anger or ideology. Like a majority of men of his age and time, Tillet looked to his sons because he prized his property and had a less than generous view of the business and financial abilities of women. When he wrote his will, he didn't worry about anything more than a token bequest of cash to each of his daughters, Ashton and Brett, presuming they would be provided for by their spouses. The will further stipulated that when one son predeceased the other, that son's title in the estate passed directly to the surviving brother.
"So Cooper is the sole owner of record now. But he's generously allowed me to stay on here out of regard for Orry. I have the management of the plantation, and the income from it, for as long as he remains the owner, and so long as I pay the mortgage debt. I'm responsible for all of the operating expenses too, but those conditions are certainly reasonable."
"You're secure in this arrangement? I mean to say, it's legal and binding?"
"Completely. Only weeks after we got word of Orry's death, Cooper formalized the arrangement in writing. The document makes it irrevocable."
"Well, knowing how Carolinians value family ties and family property, I should think Mont Royal would stay with the Mains forever, then."
"Yes, I'm confident of that." It was her single firm hold on security. "Unfortunately, there's no income at all right now, and no great prospect of any. About the best I can say in answer to your question about our welfare is that we're managing."
"I suppose that's the best any of us can expect at present. My daughter Sally's marrying Colonel Johnny Haskell later this month. That lightens the clouds a little." He sipped from the cup. "Delicious. What do you hear from Charles?"
"I had a letter two months ago. He said he hoped to go back in the army, out West."
"I understand a great many Confederates are doing that. I hope they treat him decently. He was one of my best scouts. Iron Scouts, we called them. He lived up to the name, although, toward the end, I confess that I noticed him behaving strangely on occasion."
Madeline nodded. "I noticed it when he came home this spring. The war hurt him. He fell in love with a woman in Virginia and she died bearing his son. He has the boy with him now."
"Family is one of the few balms for pain," Hampton murmured. He drank again. "Now tell me how you really are."
"As I said, General, surviving. No one's raised the issue of my parentage, so I'm spared having to deal with that."
She looked at him as she spoke, wanting to test him. Hampton's ruddy outdoorsman's face remained calm. "Of course I heard about it. It makes no difference."
"Thank you."
"Madeline, in addition to asking about Charles, I called to make an offer. We all face difficult circumstances, but you face them alone. There are unscrupulous men of both races wandering the roads of this state. Should you need refuge from that at any time, or if the struggle grows too hard for any reason and you want a short respite, come to Columbia. My home and Mary's is yours always."
"That's very kind," she said. "Don't you think the chaos in South Carolina will end soon?"
"No, not soon. But we can hasten the day by taking a stand for what's right."
She sighed. "What is that?"
He gazed at the sun-flecked river. "In Charleston, some gentlemen offered me command of an expedition to found a colony in Brazil. A slaveholding colony. I refused it. I said this was my home and I would no longer think of North and South; only of America. We fought, we lost, the issue of a separate nation on the continent is resolved. Nevertheless, in South Carolina we confront the very large problem of the Negro. His status is changed. How should we behave? Well, he was faithful to us as a slave, so I believe we ought to treat him fairly as a free man. Guarantee him justice in our courts. Give him the franchise if he's qualified, exactly as we give it to white men. If we do that, the wandering crowds will disband and the Negro will again take up Carolina as his home, and the white man as his friend."