... if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword ... it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
The judgments of the Lord. Charles kept returning to the phrase, staring at the five words on the yellowing newsprint. They summed up and reinforced what had been with him ever since the fire. A positive, guilt-tainted conviction that the war was ending in the only fitting and proper way.
Still, resting the back of his head against the tree and closing his eyes — speculation — he did recognize that it might have come out differently had not chance betrayed the South on so many occasions.
If the copy of Lee's order had not been found wrapped around the cigars before Sharpsburg.
If Jackson had not been wounded by a North Carolina rifleman.
If Stuart hadn't disappeared off the map, riding to repair his reputation, before Gettysburg.
If the Commissary Department had been run by a competent man instead of a bungler.
If Davis had cared more for common folk and the land and less for the preservation of philosophic principles.
If, if, if — what the hell was the use? They would lose. They had lost.
Up in Virginia, however, the war went on. And he had a remount. The war had done things to his head. Burned him out, used him up, like a piece of fatwood kindling. But he still had to go back. West Point taught duty above all.
He crumpled the newspaper and threw it away. He sat staring into the rain where he imagined he saw Gus standing, smiling at him.
He put his hand over his eyes, held it there half a minute, lowered it.
She was gone.
He climbed to his feet feeling as if he weighed seven hundred pounds. Still limping slightly from the healing leg wound, he went off to search for his mule. He collected his old army Colt, for which he had no ammunition, the cross-shaped sword fragment, which might in an emergency serve as a dagger, and his gypsy cloak of scraps and rags. He said good-bye to everyone and rode away north before dark.
131
On Palm Sunday evening, Brett and Billy walked up through the laurel above Belvedere. Hazard's was shut down, customary on the Sabbath, though some of the banked fires still fed smoke traceries out of the chimneys. The air was warm and fragrant with spring. Behind them, the tiered streets of the town, the peaceful river, the sunset over the mountains created a landscape of grays and mauves and small patches of pale, dusty orange.
That morning they had attended church, then partaken of a huge noonday meal, at which Mr. Wotherspoon had been a welcome guest. Ever since, Brett had silently rehearsed the two things she wanted to say to her husband. One was directly related to the impending end of the war, the other less so.
She knew the essence of each statement and some of the words, but she wanted a proper setting, too. So she had suggested the stroll. Now she found herself anxious and strangely unable to begin.
Billy seemed content to walk in silence, relishing the spring dusk and the feel of her hand in his. They came to the meteorite crater they had discovered the night before he returned to duty in the spring of '61, a night followed by so many changes in Brett herself and in the country that it sometimes resembled a series of tableaux on a stage, viewed from a balcony, rather than events in which she had taken part.
She noticed that weeds had at last begun to grow in the crater, covering about two-thirds of the surface of the sloping sides. But the poisoned earth at the bottom remained bare.
They strolled toward the next summit. Should she start with the second subject? No, it was better to dispose of the difficult one first. She forced herself.
"How soon do you think Madeline will be able to travel to South Carolina?"
He thought a moment. "They say there's almost nothing left of Lee's army. Or Joe Johnston's. I can't imagine that either can hold out more than a few weeks longer. I would guess she could start home sometime in May, if not sooner."
She took his other hand. Holding both, she faced him in the fading, dusty light.
"I'd like to go with her."
A smile. "I suspected you might."
"It isn't entirely for the reason you think. I do want to see how Mont Royal fared, but I have another motive. One which —" steadily, she looked at him "— which I'm not sure you'll approve of. I want to go back and stay awhile. The nigras will be free, and they'll need help adjusting to the change."
"You'll forgive me, but that sounds faintly like the benevolent mistress of the plantation speaking."
His wry smile angered her unexpectedly. "It may be, but don't you dare patronize me for it."
Billy put his arm around her. "Here, I didn't mean to upset you —"
She sighed. "And I didn't mean to snap. But I've been away so long — I admit I'm homesick. And I'm not patronizing the people at Mont Royal when I say they need help. Protection. They're in danger of being transferred from one kind of slavery to another. It was your own brother, Stanley, who warned me."
"Stanley? What do you mean?"
As accurately as she could, she repeated Stanley's remarks of a couple of years ago concerning the Republican scheme to befriend the freed Negroes, the better, to manipulate them as voters.
"Stanley said that?"
"Indeed he did. He was drunk at the time, else he wouldn't have spoken so freely. He declared that the party, or one faction anyway, had already agreed on the strategy. I believe him. That's why I want to go home and stay for a time. The slavery of ignorance is as wicked as any other kind. Perhaps it's the crudest slavery of all, because any man can see an iron cuff on his own leg, but it's hard to detect an invisible one."
She watched for a reaction. He lowered his head slightly, the dark hair, so like his brother George's, tossing in the strengthening breeze. A few bright stars shone against the mauve now. She could only interpret his silence as disapproval.
She refused to be so easily defeated. Not after Scipio Brown and his brood of lost children had worked such changes in the way she viewed people. She snapped off a bit of laurel, twirling it in her fingers.
"Do you remember your last night at home when the war started?" A nod. "We walked up here, and I said I was frightened. You reassured me by talking about this." She held out the sprig. "You told me what your mother had taught — that the laurel is like a man and woman's love for each other. It can endure anything. Well, I made a discovery while you were gone. I discovered it in the eyes and faces of those children at Mr. Brown's school. If the kind of love your mother described doesn't touch everyone — embrace everyone — if it can't be given freely and equally to everyone, it's meaningless. It doesn't exist."
"And going home — helping the nigras in whatever way you have in mind — that's an expression of love?"
Very softly: "To me it is."
"Brett —" he cleared his throat — "I met hundreds of men in the army who finally accepted emancipation because it was government policy, but they would choke on what you just said. There are a lot of them in that town right down there. They'd reach for a club or a gun to defend their right to be superior to Negroes."
"I know. But how can love be the property of a favored few? Or freedom, either? I was raised to believe they could. Then I came here to this state, this town, an utter stranger — and I learned."
"Changed, I would say."