Hampton leaped to his feet, his stocky frame silhouetted against fading light in the west. "It is your land, too, sir. Your cause —"
"Correction, sir. It was. I obeyed orders until the surrender. But not a moment longer. Good evening, gentlemen."
Charles left before dawn, while Billy and Brett were still asleep with their arms around each other, squeezed onto the rickety cot provided for them. Billy had gone to bed saddened because his best friend had said so little to him. Charles had withheld something of great personal importance and had walked away every time Billy tried to mention his heroic behavior during the Libby escape. He had ridden off without a word of farewell, as Billy discovered soon after he awoke.
Smelling imitation coffee brewing, he gently touched Brett's middle — it was now certain that she was pregnant — kissed her warm throat, and slipped off the creaky cot. He lifted the cloth partition and found Andy at the stove. Andy confirmed that Charles had gone.
"Strange fella," he said. "Was he always so moody and glum?"
"No. Something happened to him in Virginia. Something other than the war. He was courting a woman. A widow. He cared for her very much —"
"Never heard a thing about any woman."
"He didn't tell me, either. Madeline did."
"Maybe that's it," Andy said, nodding. "If he thinks he lost her, that could account for it. A woman can tear up a man almost as much as goin' to war, I guess."
He smiled, but Billy didn't.
The passing days showed Brett how radically conditions and relationships had changed in four short years. Cooper toiled in the rice fields like one of their father's people. Madeline, who had been the chatelaine for a time, tied up her skirts, wrapped her black hair in a bandanna, and sweated right alongside him. Despite Billy's protests, Brett did, too. She insisted it would be a few months yet before she was unable to do her share.
Despite the joy of the new life growing within her, Mont Royal disappointed Brett because there were no blacks who wanted or needed her help. The kind of teaching Jane had done for a while, for example.
"There's an entire state in need of help," Cooper said when she expressed her feeling. "You've seen all the people camped in the fields and along the roads —"
But she wasn't persuaded. Everything was different and, except for her life with Billy, unhappily so.
George felt much the same way on the thirteenth of May. It was Saturday, the end of a week that saw Davis and his small party captured at a woodland bivouac near Irwinville, Georgia. George was shocked at the widespread ruin in Charleston, to which a coastal steamer from Philadelphia had brought him, with Constance. He was grieved by the sight of so many burned homes and buildings, and even more saddened by the great numbers of Negroes everywhere. Rather than happy, they seemed uneasy and occasionally sullen in their new state of freedom.
"It's entirely fitting and right that they have it," he said to Constance as they boarded the ancient sloop Osprey, which would take them up the Ashley. George wore a dark broadcloth suit; though not yet mustered out, he refused to wear his uniform. Nor did he need it to generate plenty of hostile stares and rude treatment.
"But there are practical problems," he went on. "How is freedom going to feed them? Clothe them? Educate them?" Even if practical answers could be found, would Northerners allow them to be implemented now that the military victory was won? Some would, of course; his sister, Virgilia, for example. But he believed such people were in a minority. The majority's turn of mind was illustrated by the telegraphic flimsy still folded in his pocket.
The message from Wotherspoon had been delivered to the pier in Philadelphia an hour before the coastal steamer weighed anchor: SIX MEN QUITTING TO PROTEST HIRING TWO COLORED.
He had immediately wired back: LET THE SIX GO. HAZARD. But that didn't alter the larger picture, and he knew it. His attitude was an atypical drop in the Yankee ocean.
Answering his questions of a moment ago, Constance said, "That's the purpose of the Freedmen's Bureau, isn't it? General Howard is supposed to be a decent, capable man —"
"But look who wormed into the bureau as one of his assistants. Do you really believe Stanley did it for humanitarian reasons? There's some secret agenda — political, probably. We're in for a bad time for a few years, I'm afraid. It may last even longer if the wounds don't heal. Aren't permitted to heal —"
But the Ashley was smooth, and their short journey upriver on Osprey uneventful — until they had their first glimpse of the plantation. George exclaimed softly. Constance clutched the rail.
"My God," he said. "Even the pier's gone."
"That's right, sir," the master of the sloop called from the wheel. There was a slyly exaggerated politeness to the last word, saying the captain didn't really believe his passenger deserved the appellation. The overused, overblown sir was a common Southernism, George was discovering.
"You'll have to cross a plank to shore," the man added. His eyes indicated that he might be pleased if husband and wife fell in the muddy water.
They had sent no advance word of their visit. They piled their valises on the grassy bank, including one old satchel that George had not let out of his sight since leaving Lehigh Station. As the whistle blew and the sloop chugged away, an unfamiliar black man appeared from behind the ruins of the great house. While Constance waited, George walked up the lawn. The Negro hurried down to meet him, introducing himself as Andy.
"George Hazard." They shook hands. Andy recognized the name and dashed off to carry the news to Cooper and the others, who were apparently at work in the rice fields.
George's shock deepened as he again studied the ruins, seeing in imagination the glittering ball the Mains once gave in honor of the visiting Hazards. The hanging lanterns, the swelling music, the laughing gentlemen and soft-shouldered women.
And here came Cooper, bare-chested and sweaty, a look of exhaustion on his face. He was followed by Billy, Brett, and Madeline, all grubby as farmers and giving off strong odors in the afternoon heat.
George silently reproved himself for the negative reaction. The Mains had always been farmers, though of a very elegant and special kind. Now it appeared that they had — to twist it a little — no hands but their own. Billy's were wet from the ooze of broken blisters, George noticed.
He wasn't surprised to find his brother here. Constance had reported Billy's departure with Brett and Madeline when George came home on furlough late in April. Once George had decided on this trip, he had shamelessly telegraphed Stanley and asked him to secure an extension of his leave.
Cooper and Judith, however, were astonished by the arrival of the visitors. They pretended elation, but their tiredness showed. So did an unmistakable reserve, a tension. George could scarcely believe he had ever heard the music at that lovely ball. The sight of the impoverished Mains left him full of despair. He hoped he had a partial remedy, brought up with the luggage and placed near his feet on the brilliant spring lawn.
Madeline and Judith led the visitors to the substitute porch — logs, boxes, and barrels arranged in front of the new pine house — then went inside to prepare some refreshments.
There was a half hour of halting exchanges of information about the two families. George expressed his sympathy to Madeline, then asked Cooper, "Where is Orry's grave? I'd like to pay my respects."