"Do you really believe that, General?"
A slight frown appeared, perhaps of annoyance. "I do. Only full justice and compassion will alleviate the plight of this state."
"I must say you're more generous to the blacks than most."
"Well, they present us with a practical issue as well as a moral one. Our lands are destroyed, our homes are burned, our money and bonds are worthless, and soldiers are quartered on our doorsteps. Should we make matters worse by pretending that our cause is not lost? That it somehow might prevail even yet? I think it was lost from the start. I stayed away from the 1860 special convention because I thought secession an impossible folly. Are we to start living our illusions all over again? Are we to invite reprisal by resisting an honorable effort to restore the Union?"
"A great many people want to resist," she said.
"And if gentlemen such as Mr. Stevens and Mr. Sumner try to force me into social equality with Negroes, I will resist. Beyond that, however, if Washington is reasonable, and we are reasonable, we can rebuild. If our people cling to their old follies, they'll only start a new kind of war."
Again she sighed. "I hope common sense prevails. I'm not certain it will."
Hampton rose and clasped her hands between his. "Don't forget my offer. Sanctuary, if you ever need it."
Impulsively, she kissed his cheek. "You're a kind man, General. God bless you."
Away he went on his fine stallion, disappearing where the half-mile lane of splendid trees joined the river road.
At sunset, Madeline walked through the fallow rice square, pondering Hampton's remarks. For a proud and defeated man, he had a remarkably generous outlook. He was also right about the plight of South Carolina. If the state, and the South, returned to old ways, the Radical Republicans would surely be goaded to retaliate.
Something on the ground jabbed the sandal she'd fashioned from scrap leather and rope. Digging down in the sandy soil, she uncovered a rock about the size of her two hands. She and the Shermans had found many similar ones while cultivating the four planted squares, and had puzzled about it. Rocks weren't common in the Low Country.
She brushed soil from it. It was yellowish, with tan streaks, and looked porous. With a little effort, she broke it in half. Rock didn't shatter so easily. But if it wasn't rock, what was it?
She brought both halves up to her face. As she grew older, her eyes were increasingly failing. Since she'd never broken open one of the peculiar rocks, she was unprepared for the fetid odor.
It made her gag. She threw the broken pieces away and hurried back to the pine house, her shadow flying ahead of her over ground as deeply red as spilled blood.
I wish I could believe with Gen. H. that our people will recognize the wisdom and practical importance of fair play toward the freed blacks. I wish I could believe that Carolinians will be reasonable about the defeat and its consequences. I cannot. Some kind of dark mood is on me again.
It came this evening when I cracked open one of those strange rocks you pointed out once before the war. The stench —! Even our land is sour and rotten. I took it as a sign. I saw a future flowing with bile and poison.
Forgive me, Orry; I must write no more of this.
2
At twilight on the day of Hampton's visit to Mont Royal, a young woman dashed around a corner into Chambers Street, in New York City. One hand held her bonnet in place. The other held sheets of paper covered with signatures.
A misty rain was beginning to fall. She hastily tucked the papers under her arm to protect them. Ahead loomed the marquee of Wood's New Knickerbocker Theater, her destination. The theater was temporarily closed, between productions, and she was late for a special rehearsal called by the owner for half after seven o'clock.
Late in a good cause, though. She always had a cause, and it was always as important as her profession. Her father had raised her that way. She'd been an active worker for abolition since she was fifteen; she was nineteen now. She proselytized for equal rights for women, and the vote, and for fairer divorce laws, although she had never been married. Her current cause, for which she'd been collecting signatures from the theatrical community all afternoon, was the Indian — specifically the Cheyenne nation, victimized last year by the Sand Creek massacre. The petition, a memorial to be sent to Congress and the Indian Bureau of the Interior Department, demanded reparations for Sand Creek and permanent repudiation of "the Chivington process."
She turned left into the dim passage leading to the stage door. She had worked for Claudius Wood only a week and a half, but she'd already found that he had a fearful temper. And he drank. She smelled it on him at nearly every rehearsal.
Wood had seen her play Rosalind at the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia and had offered her a great deal of money. He was about thirty-five, and he'd charmed her with his fine manners and marvelous voice and raffish, worldly air. Still, she was beginning to regret her decision to leave Mrs. Drew's company and sign with Wood for a full season.
Louisa Drew had urged her to accept, saying it would be a great step forward. "You're a mature and capable young woman, Willa. But remember that New York is full of rough men. Do you have any friends there? Someone you could turn to if necessary?"
She thought a moment. "Eddie Booth."
"You know Edwin Booth?"
"Oh, yes. He and my father trouped together in the gold fields when I was little and we lived in St. Louis. I've seen Eddie several times over the years. But he's been in seclusion ever since his brother Johnny killed the President. I would never bother him with anything trivial."
"No, but he's there in an emergency." Mrs. Drew hesitated. "Do mind yourself with Mr. Wood, Willa."
Questioned, the older woman would not elaborate beyond saying, "You'll discover what I mean. I don't like to speak ill of anyone in the profession. But some actresses — the prettier ones — have trouble with Wood. You shouldn't pass up this chance because of that. Just be cautious."
The young woman going down the passage in a rush was Willa Parker. She was a tall, leggy girl, slim enough for trouser roles, yet with a soft, full bosom ideal for Juliet. She had wide-set, slightly slanted blue eyes that lent her an exotic quality, and hair so pale blond it shone silvery when she was onstage in the limelight. Mrs. Drew, with affection, called Willa a gamine. Her charming Irish husband, John, called her "my fair sprite."
Her skin was smooth, her mouth wide, her face given an air of strength by the line of her chin. Sometimes she felt forty years old, because her mother had died when she was three, her father when she was fourteen, and she'd played theatrical roles since age six. She was the only child of a woman she couldn't remember and a free-thinking, hard-working father she loved with total devotion until a heart seizure felled him in the storm scene of Lear.
Peter Parker had been one of those actors who worked at his profession with ardor and enthusiasm even though he had realized as a young man that his talent would provide only a subsistence, never let him shine with his name above the title of a play. He'd begun playing child parts in his native England, growing into older roles done in the dignified classical style of the Kemble family and Mrs. Siddons. In his twenties, he'd performed with the flamboyant Kean, who won him away from classicism to Kean's own naturalism, which encouraged an actor to do whatever the part demanded, even scream or crawl on the floor.
It was after his first engagement with Kean that he forever abandoned the last name he'd inherited at birth, Potts. Too many unfunny uses of it by fellow actors — Flower Potts, Chamber Potts — convinced him to adopt Parker as more practical and more likely to inspire favorable recognition. Willa knew the family name, which amused her, although from her earliest years she'd thought of herself as a Parker.