In the foyer, she reached out to grasp the freshly oiled banister, gazing upward. She fought back more tears and images of Orry. She lifted her foot to the first step.
It seemed to require hours to go up the staircase; she had never taken a longer or harder journey. At last she turned down the hall to the door of Madeline's sitting room, which was ajar. Through the opening Brett saw sunshine flooding the carpet; the room overlooked the laurel-covered hilltops behind the mansion. Her hand shook as she knocked.
"Yes, come in," Madeline called cheerily.
Go on, Brett thought. It became a silent scream. Go on. She wanted to run.
"Who's there?"
Underskirts rustling, Madeline walked to the door and opened it. The index finger of her other hand held her place in a slim, gold-stamped book. Her dress today was one of her favorites, a blue silk so deep and rich it almost looked black.
"Brett! Do come in. I was just rereading a few of Poe's poems. One is Orry's very favor — my dear, what's the matter?" She had been slow to note the signs that Brett had been crying. "Has Billy taken a bad turn?"
"It isn't Billy. It's Orry."
Madeline's dark eyes showed apprehension. So did her fading smile. She took her finger from the book, drew it against her breast like a shield. She saw the letter in Brett's right hand.
"Is there some problem in Richmond?"
"Orry isn't — wasn't — in Richmond." Why was she so slow to tell it? Delay would only prolong the anguish for both of them. "This is from George. I'm afraid it's very bad news."
With a forced look of skepticism, Madeline took the letter to the sunlit window bay. Brett waited near the door, noting the way Orry's wife moved the first page away from her face; her eyesight had begun to trouble her. She was turned toward the window.
She finished the first page and began the second. The initial indication of a reaction was a ripple of the dress material across her shoulders.
Her head whipped around. Angry, she said, "The Petersburg lines? How did he get to the Petersburg lines?"
"I wish I could tell you."
Madeline forced her eyes back to the letter. Watching her in profile, Brett saw the light glisten on a tear. The book dropped from Madeline's hand, striking the carpet with a soft thump. She seemed to tense and grow taller, as if straining on tiptoe for some reason.
Her hand crushed the letter. "Orry," she cried out and tumbled sideways in a spill of silk and petticoats.
"Kathleen," Brett exclaimed in the hall. "Kathleen — someone — bring the sal ammonia. Hurry!"
Voices downstairs said she had been heard. Brett turned around in the doorway, stricken by the sight of Madeline sprawled on the fine Persian rug. She was awake after the brief fainting spell, but she didn't get up. She lay on her side, awkwardly supporting herself with both hands. She trembled, her mouth half open. When she looked at Brett, there was no recognition.
The effect was overpowering. Brett was paralyzed, unable to move or help her sister-in-law for the next few moments. She couldn't even speak. Billy had been spared, but her brother was gone. The pain was unmerciful. How much worse it must be for Madeline. How would she find the strength to survive? Or even a reason to try?
125
Charles woke at daybreak on Sunday, the nineteenth of February. He had been dreaming of Gus.
It happened often. Opening his eyes didn't relieve the melancholy of the dreams or banish her image. She was a constant presence, stealing into his thoughts at intervals every day.
Yawning, he picked up the light cavalry saber and trudged downstairs. In the kitchen building, he found a fresh pot of imitation coffee, concocted of God knew what, and not a single Negro. He drank half a cup of the stuff — all he could stomach; it tasted like wood shavings. He poured the rest out the door and hunted for a rag.
He walked back to the weathered plantation house and braced an old chair against the wall on the piazza. From there he could watch the tree-sheltered lane leading to the river road and the road itself, brightened by winter sun. He pulled the rag out of his back pocket and reached down at the end of the piazza for a pinch of sandy soil. He dropped it on the rag and moistened it with spit till its consistency suited him. He sat down in the chair, drew the Solingen sword from its scabbard, and began to polish the dulled blade.
The stillness had a quality of expectancy. It had been present since yesterday, when wild rumors swept the river district. Rumors that Columbia had been burned night before last.
About eight o'clock, traffic on the river road began to pick up, men and an occasional military wagon coming from the direction of Charleston. Some butternut boys turned in, begging for a drink. Charles agreed to direct them to the well in return for information.
"What's going on in the city?"
"A lot of it's burned down. The mayor surrendered the whole place to some damned Dutchman, General Schimmel-something, right about this time yesterday. We are all going home. The South's licked."
Could have told you that a year ago. He didn't say it. They looked miserable enough — as did Cooper, who stepped onto the piazza wearing ragged slippers and a dressing gown with a large hole in one elbow.
"What's become of Sumter?" he asked one of the ragged soldiers.
"Nothing left but a pile of rock." The boy added bitterly, "That's what the Yanks wanted more'n anything."
"I have a house on Tradd Street. Do you think it survived the fire?"
"Couldn't say, but I wouldn't count on it. Is it all right if we stop talkin' and find the well?"
After they left, Cooper went inside, shaking his head. Charles returned to his chair and kept rubbing the steel. The engraved flowers. The medallion containing the letters C. S. The legend on the other side: To Charles Main, beloved of his family, 1861. That was another man. From another life, not this one.
A dilapidated shay pulled in about noon. The driver was Markham Bull, a neighbor and member of the large and distinguished Bull family. Fifty-five or so, Markham was in a state. He had been in Columbia attending to the affairs of a lately deceased sister when Sherman arrived. He had barely escaped in the aftermath of Friday night's fire, which he confirmed as fact.
"Whole town's gone, just about. The damn Yankees are claiming Wade Hampton lit the first match, to destroy the cotton rather than let them get hold of it. You can't imagine the behavior of Sherman's men. By comparison, the Goths and the Vandals were courtly. They even burned Millwood."
Charles raised his eyebrows. "Hampton's Millwood?"
"Yes, sir. All of his family portraits — his fine library — everything."
"Where's the general now?"
"I don't know. I heard he planned to ride west of the Mississippi to continue the fight, but that may not be true."
The fighting part could be true, Charles thought as Bull climbed into his shay and rattled off. The death of his son had embittered Hampton. If beautiful old Millwood was gone as well, that would only enhance the bitterness. Charles had a dark feeling that much the same process would be taking place within a lot of people in Dixie during the next weeks and months. Whether you construed it as punishment or suffering depended on your loyalties, but either way he was damn sure there would be plenty of bad blood left after the war.
The stragglers on the road became fewer as the day wore on. Light clouds moved in, hazing the sun, then hiding it. Charles kept polishing. By four o'clock he had restored most of the blade's original brilliance. He spat into an azalea bush, stretched and sniffed the wind's marshy odor. A salt crow squawked somewhere on the river behind the house. It struck him that he had heard a lot of crows during the last hour.