So change was in the air — needed, unwanted, immutable. Sometimes, as in the Presbyterian church, just imagining possible futures made George's head ache.
When they reached home, Constance looked in on the sleeping children, then prepared hot cocoa for George. As she waited for water to boil, she reread her father's letter. It had arrived yesterday.
Patrick Flynn had reached California in the autumn. He found a land of sunny somnolence, remote from the war. In '61 there had been rumors of revolt and a Pacific Confederacy, but those had died out. Flynn reported that his new legal practice in Los Angeles brought him virtually no money, but he was happy. How he survived, he didn't say, but his daughter's fears about his safety were eased.
She carried the cocoa to George in the library. She was tired but he, wearing just his uniform trousers with braces and his shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows, looked exhausted. He had turned the gas up full and spread sheets of paper in front of the inkstand. Some bore writing; some were blank.
She set the cocoa down. "Will you be long?"
"As long as it takes to finish this. I must show it to Senator Sherman tomorrow — that is, today — at the President's reception."
"Must we go? Those affairs are horrid. So many people, it's impossible to move."
"I know, but Sherman expects me. He's promised me an introduction to Senator Wilson of Massachusetts. Wilson's chairman of the Military Affairs Committee. An ally we very badly need."
"How soon will the appropriations bill be introduced?"
"In the House, within two weeks. The real fight comes in the Senate. We don't have much time."
Bending over him where he had sunk into a chair, she touched his hair tenderly. "You're a remarkable zealot for a man who never liked soldiering."
"I still don't like it, but I love West Point, though I didn't know it till long after I graduated."
She kissed his brow. "Come to bed as soon as you can."
He nodded absently. He never saw her leave.
He inked his pen and resumed work on the article he had agreed to write for the New York Times, one of the Academy's staunch defenders. The piece was a rebuttal of a favorite argument of Senator Wade, namely, that West Point should be abolished because two hundred out of eight hundred and twenty regular officers in the army in 1861 had resigned to join the Confederacy.
If that is sufficient reason to dismantle worthy institutions, George wrote under the gaslight, "we must perforce carry it into other spheres and, recollecting the divers senators and representatives who similarly resigned — among them Mr. Jefferson Davis, whom Senator Wade characterizes as "the arch-rebel, the archfiend of this rebellion " — dismantle our national legislative bodies, for they, too, have bred traitors. In this context, Senator Wade's argument can be seen for what it is — specious and demagogic.
He would make enemies with those last three words. He didn't give a damn. The battle had been joined, and a powerful cabal meant to bury the Academy permanently this year. Led by Wade, the cabal included Lyman Trumbull of Illinois and James Lane of Kansas. Senator Lane was so confident, he was boasting of West Point's demise all over Washington.
Sipping cold cocoa, George wrote on, shivering as the house cooled, yawning against fatigue, firing verbal cannonades in the small war whose outcome he deemed almost as vital to the nation as that of the larger one. He wrote on into the new morning of the new year, until he fell asleep on top of his manuscript around five, a strand of his hair lying across the nib of his discarded pen and getting inky.
"Yes, I'm happy to say she'll be joining me soon," Orry told the President. In his right hand he held a punch cup, but he had declined a plate. Dexterous as he had become, he still could not eat and drink at the same time. "It's entirely possible that she's on her way right now."
The President's appearance disturbed Orry. He was paler than ever, haggard, with the tight, slightly hunched posture of a man in pain. Much more than neuralgia bedeviled Jefferson Davis these days. His cotton embargo was a failure despite a shortage in British mills. Diplomatic recognition in Europe was no longer even a remote hope. Critics sniped at him for continuing to support the unpopular Bragg in the West and for causing shortages at home. In Richmond, coffee had been almost completely replaced by vile concoctions of okra or sweet potatoes or watermelon seeds sweetened with sorghum. Messages were starting to appear, slashed in paint on city walls: STOP THE WAR. UNION AGAIN!
This New Year's afternoon, officers, men in civilian clothes, and many women packed the official residence on Clay Street in the distinguished old Court End neighborhood. Davis strove to fix his entire attention on each guest, if only briefly. Despite his tribulations, his smile and manner were full of warmth:
"Good news indeed, Colonel. You hoped to have her in Richmond long before this, I recall."
"She was to join me early last year, but the plantation was struck with a series of misfortunes." He mentioned his mother's seizure but not the increasing problem of runaways. Davis inquired about Clarissa. Orry said she had regained most of her physical faculties.
Then Davis asked: "How are you getting on with Mr. Seddon?"
"Fine, sir. I'm aware of his outstanding reputation as a lawyer here in Richmond."
That was all Orry would say. James Seddon of Goochland County had replaced General Gustavus Smith as Secretary of War. Smith had served a total of four days after Randolph resigned in November to accept a commission. Orry disliked the gaunt Seddon's somber disposition and strong secessionist views. Seddon and his wife were here somewhere. He changed the subject.
"Permit me a question in another area, Mr. President. The enemy is arming black troops. Do you feel we might benefit by taking the same course?"
"Do you?"
"Yes, possibly."
Davis's mouth straightened to a tight line. "The idea is pernicious, Colonel. As Mr. Cobb of Georgia observed, if nigras will make good soldiers, our entire theory of slavery is wrong. Excuse me."
And off he went to another guest. Orry felt irritated with Davis; it was a harmful weakness, that inability to entertain opinions different from his own.
He sipped the excessively sweet punch, alone in the large crowd in the central drawing room of the mansion people called the White House because of its exterior layer of plaster on brick. It was a splendid residence, bought by the city and presented to Mr. and Mrs. Davis as a gift. There was a drawing room on the west side and a dining room on the east. There, from high windows behind the refreshment tables, Orry had looked out across Shockoe Valley to Church Hill and winter skies dark as the slate roof of the house.
Behind him, some guests discussed a rumored plot to establish yet a third country on the continent, this new one to be combination of states in the Northwest and upper South. The speakers all sounded agitated, even slightly hysterical. The reception was beginning to depress him. He edged toward the door. Suddenly he heard a voice he recognized — Varina Davis's.
"— and henceforward, my dear, I reserve the right of not returning social calls. That is my Fort Sumter — and to the devil with the objections of that pipsqueak editor Pollard."
Orry didn't turn to look at the First Lady, but he heard the strain within her sarcasm. Strain infected this crowd and Richmond like a pestilence.
He, too, had fallen victim. The cause was more than loneliness and longing for Madeline exacerbated by the months of delay. He hated his work in the War Department — the constant battle to curb Winder's excesses in the prisons he supervised and to check the reckless arrest of anyone the general deemed an enemy of the state. Currently, Winder was trying to sniff out members of a highly secret peace society, the Order of the Heroes of America.