True enough. Stomach wounds were usually mortal. It would save their hard-pressed doctors time and effort if he just put a ball through the soldier's heart and was done with it. That was more humane than leaving him to suffer, and it might be wise from another standpoint as well. Orry distrusted the look in the young trooper's eyes.
Then shame flooded in. What sort of monster was he becoming even to entertain such thoughts? Slowly, he maneuvered the uncocked revolver into the holster on his left hip, beneath the overcoat. He dismounted and took pains to stand erect, a strangely courtly figure in spite of his patched and shabby coat of gray with its pinned-up sleeve.
"We should let the surgeons determine his chances," he said to the Virginia boys. He stepped toward the wounded trooper, who displayed no gratitude, no emotion at all. Well, Orry understood how emotion could be whipped out of a man by war's fatigue and pain. His wariness changed to cool pity as he stared down at the trooper, who stared back, forced by his position to look at Orry with a great deal of white showing in his eyes.
Orry stepped backward two paces to a point between the Yank's outstretched leg and the orderlies. He turned toward the pair, pointing. "See if we can fashion some of those limbs and a saddle blanket into a litter. Then —"
He heard the sounds behind him. Saw, at the same instant, the shock and fear on one orderly's face. Orry's tall body had momentarily prevented the young men from seeing the wounded Yank, who had used the opportunity to slide a concealed Colt from under his right thigh. He aimed at the back of Orry's head and fired.
The booming shot lifted most of the top of Orry's skull. As he dropped to his knees, already dead, the cursing, screaming orderlies began pumping shots into the Yank. The bullets jerked him one way, then another, like some berserk marionette. When the shooting stopped, he leaned to the right with a peculiar, peaceful sigh and lay down as if asleep. The trembling orderlies lowered their smoking pieces as the white silence settled again.
At a few minutes before noon that day, Madeline left Belvedere to walk in the hills. There was an air of jubilation throughout the house, generated by news that had come over the telegraph wire earlier in the morning and spread through all of Lehigh Station within two hours. Three days before, General Sherman had sent an unexpected greeting to the President.
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.
Madeline couldn't share the mood of celebration. Constance in particular was sensitive to this, and restrained in her remarks about Sherman's incredible march to the sea. Yet it was easy to detect her delight. Even Brett seemed pleased by the news, though she said nothing to indicate it. All of which made Madeline more than a little resentful.
She wasn't proud of the feeling, which she tried to purge as she adjusted her shawl around her shoulders and climbed a path toward one of the rounded summits covered with laurel. The December sun lent the day a welcome warmth. The weather had been unusually mild recently, almost autumnal. She wondered why she had bothered with the shawl.
From the hilltop, she heard the first clang from a steeple. St. Margaret's-in-the-Vale, she decided. After just a few weeks, she was able to identify the different churches by their bells. She had learned a lot about the industrial town and received a warm welcome there from the Hazards and all the servants. Yet Lehigh Station remained an alien place. Study it as she would, she couldn't create the illusion that she belonged here.
One by one, the other churches began to peal their bells in celebration of the news. Head down, Madeline faced away from the hazy vista of town and factory, obsessed by a single thought: How I wish Orry were here for Christmas.
Suddenly, feeling something on her neck, she raised her head and turned around. She studied the sky. A wide gray mass showed in the northwest. What she had felt was the wind shifting to a different quarter. It was chilly now.
She adjusted her shawl again, grateful that she had it. The colder wind began to tug and snap the hem of her skirt. She mustn't resent the bells, but find joy in them. Every Union victory sped the day when Orry would be free to leave Richmond and rejoin her at Mont Royal. Considered that way, the bells pealed a message of hope.
The earlier resentment gone, she lingered beneath the rapidly graying sky to listen to the loud, discordant, yet strangely beautiful music from the steeples. The peace of the season slowly filled her and showed her visions of many other Christmases she would share with her beloved Orry. She was happy when she took the downward path again.
BOOK SIX
THE JUDGMENTS OF THE LORD
My views are, sir, that our people are tired of war, feel themselves whipped, and will not fight. Our country is overrun.
119
Mr. Lonzo Perdue, postal clerk and third-generation resident of Richmond, was a man beset by miseries. Scores of small signs warned that the Confederacy's death agony had begun, which meant the death agony of the city as well. Mr. Perdue wanted to rush his beloved wife and daughters away to safety. But where did safety lie with the Yankees so close? And even if he found sanctuary, how would he provide for his dear ones? The money with which the government paid him was worthless. If an officer on leave was lucky enough to find a pair of secondhand boots these days, he would buy them for fifteen hundred Confederate dollars and tip the clerk another five hundred.
It was January, the coldest in Lonzo Perdue's memory. The upper crust, a section of the social pie in which no one had ever placed Mr. Perdue, even by mistake, continued to hold parties, which the papers dutifully reported. They were called "starvation parties" now. The nobs attending drank lukewarm dandelion coffee and munched bits of James River ice served on dessert plates.
Not only were there snow flurries in the freezing air, there was despair. The brigand Sherman was loose in the Carolinas, burning, raping, and pillaging as he had done while crossing Georgia. Admiral Porter had closed on Fort Fisher with a Union flotilla and would soon force a surrender, if he hadn't already; lately the war news traveled like corn syrup left outdoors overnight.
Mr. Perdue decided this was because all the news was bad and that egotistical, half-blind bungler Davis didn't want any more of it to reach the people than was absolutely necessary. In his bureaucratic post, Mr. Perdue naturally heard rumors. The principal ones concerned the President, who was said to be madly suing for peace in secret. As well he might. The Enquirer scathingly asserted that, come spring, not one man in two would be left in the trenches at Petersburg.
There were harbingers of collapse everywhere. Mrs. Perdue, ever a champion of good works, divided her time between the Soup Association, whose kitchens dispensed a watery potato-flavored liquid to the starving, and a ladies' circle from St. Paul's Church that located old pieces of carpet, then sectioned and packed them for shipment to the lines. Each carpet square was intended as a blanket.
On his way to his daily job, Mr. Perdue no longer stopped to visit with acquaintances encountered on the street. His only overcoat had been donated — foolishly, he now realized — to army collection agents last fall. His only pair of woolen gloves, riddled with holes, kept him about as warm as no gloves whatever.
Of course he didn't bump into many acquaintances these days. Wounded soldiers — oh, yes, plenty of those. And roving niggers. But the decent people had deserted the streets. Mr. Perdue no longer ventured out after dark, for those hours now belonged to the sharps who ran the faro banks that were still booming and the pluguglies who made brawls and robberies commonplace and the carriages of the few speculators still enjoying champagne and foie gras — the damned traitors.